Or, "How the Holidays were Cancelled this Year."
One bad thing about having an atypical 'religion' is that the world is just not structured to recognize and/or accommodate your observances. I expect even followers of Judaism, which is really not obscure in the least, run into this... whereas certain Christian holidays (like Christmas) are also national holidays, those "other" winter-solstice holidays like Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Yule aren't considered legitimate reasons to miss work.
I was thinking, ever since I started my new job, even though I only work an average of three days a week, I think I have been working on all the Sun holidays and maybe all but one of the Full Moons. Lughnasadh? I was at work. Mabon? Work. The Blue Moon we had a while back? Work. Same for both the Blood Moon and Samhain. So when I got my December schedule, I wasn't all that surprised to see I was working on Yule too. I decided I would just move my celebration a few days earlier and celebrate the Night's Moon, and I was okay with that. We planned to bake a ham and make the requisite trimmings, and have a nice little observance at home.
At 7:30 that morning, however, I got a call from work; one of my co-workers was in the hospital and I needed to go to work and cover for her. So instead of the nice holiday in the kitchen that I thought I was going to have, I again had to work. Oh well. We'll still cook and eat the ham sometime, of course, but it won't be the same.
On the other hand, the good thing about having non-standard holidays is that your observances can be much more personal; I get invited for Christmas all the time, but I don't often have other people making plans for me for Yule. I see other people requesting time off here and there all the time; I'm not sure why I don't feel like I can do the same thing. Maybe if the powers-that-be know which days are special to me, they would try to accommodate them. I don't even expect all twelve Moons and all eight Solar holidays, but a few of the special ones (like Yule or a Blue Moon) feels reasonable. I'll never know unless I ask, right?
