31 December—Federal, state, and municipal offices and facilities are closed today, New Year’s Eve, just as they were Christmas Eve, because the public—legal—holiday falls on a weekend and federal and state laws stipulate that when a holiday falls on a Sunday it is to be observed the following Monday and when a holiday falls on a Saturday it is to be observed the prior Friday.

Gee, it’s great to be a government employee. All that extra time off in addition to great pay and fringes, often unmatched by the private sector. Most private businesses, from retail merchants to the stock markets, are open all or part of the day.

Lots of banks and credit unions probably will be closed today, but they keep idiosyncratic banker’s hours at the best of times. And you don’t have to go to a bank to deposit or withdraw money these days, anyway.

Contrary to common belief, the USPS is a government agency, but post offices will be open today nevertheless, although some probably will close early, and deliveries will be made as usual. Hopefully, the post offices and sorting facilities will be able to process and deliver mail today that should have been processed and delivered before Christmas.

Just yesterday, after paying the semiannual extortion to USPS that buys me the privilege of delivering my own mail, I opened my precious PO box to find a solicitation for Christmas cards that had been mailed at the end of November. Certainly Trump’s shithead holdover logistics-genius postmaster boasted before the holidays that there would be delays. But come on.

In performing due diligence of the pre- and post-holiday closing advantage of public employees, I discovered that those special days are—in this state, at any rate—appointed or recommended by the Governor of Connecticut or the President of the United States as days of thanksgiving, fasting, or religious observance.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that sounds like a clear, flagrant violation of the First Amendment for starters. True, the First is commonly and ruthlessly abused with impunity, but it’s less commonly violated.

There’s no specific mention of purely secular holidays like Memorial Day or Veterans Day, unless they’re implicitly subsumed under days of thanksgiving. Is Labor Day supposed to be a day of thanksgiving for unions?

And, as for fasting, imagine turning all those Roman Catholic fast days into legal holidays. It was bad enough (and unconstitutional, of course) when liquor stores had to be closed on Good Friday in this state.

Not to mention Yom Kippur, the fastingest fast day of them all. But it’s doubtful that would ever become a legal holiday in the United States.

Happy New Year . . .