January 18th 2020 is a Saturday. Many of us will wake up, wipe the sleep from our eyes and feel relaxed and relieved that it is the weekend and we don’t have to go to work. That’s just as well as January 18th is one of a handful of days in 2020 when there are no public holidays being observed anywhere in the world!
This year, there are over 4,700 public holidays shared between 216 countries – an average of about 10 holiday events per day. However it is not an even distribution and there are nine other days in 2020, like January 18th, when nobody is off work celebrating some sort of holiday.
If we exclude Fridays (as Friday and Saturday are the weekend in many Islamic countries), Saturdays and Sundays, there are only five days when in theory we should all be working:
- Saturday January 18th 2020
- Thursday February 13th 2020
- Saturday February 29th 2020
- Saturday March 07th 2020
- Saturday March 28th 2020
- Tuesday August 18th 2020
- Friday September 4th 2020
- Monday December 14th 2020
- Tuesday December 15th 2020
- Wednesday December 23rd 2020
Three of these are in December. Until 2018, December 23rd would have been claimed by Japan for the Emperor’s Birthday, but that has moved to February with the new Emperor coming to the throne in 2019.
As August 18th is part of the traditional summer holiday weeks in Europe and December redeems itself with Christmas, we can say that the remaining date of Thursday February 13th is officially the most boring day of 2020.
Looking back at 2019, there were 13 days without holidays with six of those not falling on a weekend. And guess what, the one weekday that is common to both is … drum roll, our new friend – February 13th!
Note that February 13th’s reign of terror will come a crushing halt in 2021 when a sixth of the world’s population will be off work to celebrate Lunar New Year’s Day!
