Take It Easy - After All, It’s Not A Holiday

This is the holiday that isn’t. It isn’t a celebration of some famous person’s birth. It has no connection to an armistice, a religious event, or the early days of a nation. It’s not decreed by an act of Congress.

It isn’t on calendars.

In fact, it’s not even named.

It’s the Friday after Thanksgiving. Once an afterthought, today it has become an institution - an eagerly anticipated holiday with its own (modest) expectations, rituals and quiet niceties.

In a society as mobile as ours, it is no coincidence that today anchors one of the busiest travel periods of the year. People have time, almost as precious as money in an era of overwork.

“People are being forced to work more and more to make ends meet,” says Harvard economist James Medoff, co-author of “The Indebted Society,” an examination of a nation under stress. “Every time you have an opportunity to take a couple of hours off or spend more time with your family, you’re going to.”

How widespread has observance of this nameless little jewel become? Nearly three-fourths of the employers nationwide surveyed by The Bureau of National Affairs offer Thanksgiving and the day after as paid holidays.

Even investors, never ones to miss a chance to turn a profit, have been unable to resist the lure of this low-pressure day. A dozen years ago, trading on the New York Stock Exchange on the Friday after Thanksgiving was more than 75 percent of the average daily volume. By 1991, it had dropped to barely 40 percent.

Business was so slow that the closing bell was moved back two hours, and another hour the next year, to 1 p.m., where it is today.

Needless to say, not everyone can indulge. Hospitals and prisons must be staffed, mail delivered, public transportation provided. The Day After is one of the busiest days of the year in retailing, so don’t ask a salesman for his or her leisure plans.

But for much of the rest of the work force, the beauty of today will be time. Sweet, sweet time. A recent study by International Survey Research Corp. found that 44 percent of workers believe their workload is excessive - up from 37 percent in 1988. Health magazine two years ago asked how many of its readers would take a 20-percent cut in income in exchange for fewer hours. Fully one-third said they would. But rare is the worker with that option.

So today will be savored, for time permits something almost as rare: choice. Shall it be the movies? A good book? A walk in the woods?

Whatever the choice, this is a day for which many millions give thanks.