BANK HOLIDAYS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20929, 7 January 1938, Page 4

BANK HOLIDAYS

ARE THERE TOO MANY? No one grudges the banks having holidays at Christmas time, the New Year, or Easter, when the great majority of other folk are doing the same. But the average business man in New Zealand is inclined at times to become sarcastic, and sometimes even rude, when, in deference to some saint to whose “feast” the general public pay not the slightest heed, the banks shut their doors regardless of the inconvenience it causes to business. Bank holidays are fixed by statute, and to remove the perennial complaint the statute will have to be altered. "To its long list of deeds, good or evil according to various points of view, the Government might well add this very necessary reform in the matter of bank holidays,” remarked a Wellington business man recently. "This veneration which the banks hold for saints and which prompts them to observe holidays when the rest of the community is at work is an anachron-

ism. It would show no disrespect to the memory of the Apostles if banking institutions refrained from dislocating an essential part of the country’s commercial organisation. In fact, the action of the banks in closing on saints’ days is calculated to instil into the remainder of the commercial world the reverse of reverence for canonical festivals.”

Commercial houses, finding their routine disturbed and disrupted by odd bank holidays, do not wish to deprive banking institutions of holidays which they have earned; all they desire is that those holidays should be observed on more appropriate occasions. But at present the customs of the banks are a survival of the times when any saint's birthday was a good enough excuse for a holiday, and the customs of banks are apparently like the laws of the Medes and Persians which alter not. no matter how the commercial world may rage and gnash its teeth. Until something is done to alter the Banking Act which fixes bank holidays, the commercial world must console itself with the reflection that things are not as bad as they used to be in England. In England, prior to 1834, the Bank of England closed its doors on certain saints’ days and anniversaries which during the course of the year totalled no fewer than 33. Subsequent Acts, however, reduced this numbe. to four. New Zealand’s Banking Act authorises thirteen statutory bank holidays, and there are powers to add to this number. The days on which banks are authorised to close their doors are New Year's Day, Good Friday and the day after. Easter Monday. Christmas Day and the day after, the Sovereign’s birthday. Dominion Day, Labour Day, St. Patrick's Day (March 17), St. George’s Day (April 23), St. Andrew’s Day (November 30), and Anzac Day. The cancelling of the Dominion Day bank holiday and of the three saints’ days—holidays which are not observed by the rest of the community—w?uld please the commercial world and probably would not cause bank staffs to suffer from high blood pressure brought about by overwork.