I remember when the pope said a burger in Friday was not going to
doom you to hell. George Carlin lost a whole string of jokes.
On the other hand, all the schoolkids were grateful for the Jews,
because the public schools closed on the Jewish High Holidays.
Must have been a northern thing. In DC and Maryland the jewish kids
took a day off but the rest of us were in school.
IBM dealt with all of this by giving us 6 "optional holidays" that you
could take any time you liked along with the 6 or 7 nationally
recognized holidays. It was really just an extra few vacation days but
you had a way to say you got your particular holidays off.
It never really mattered that much to me. I ended up working most of
the holidays anyway (no kids for most of my career). I let the people
who found it important, to have their day with the family. I would
just take another day off somewhere and pocket the holiday pay.
Well, back in the day, not only did New Haven have a large Jewish and
Roman Catholic population, probably the majority when combined, but a
very high percentage of the public school teachers were Jewish. So, the
schools likely would have had very few teachers on hand when the Jewish
high holidays came around.
I seem to recall we got Columbus Day off, too. There were more Italian
Catholics than Irish Catholics.
The Italians used to put on a several day feast and carnival in
mid-August to mark the Assumption of Mary. It was held a few blocks away
from where we lived, and when I was 12, I got to kiss my first Italian
girl there. She didn't slap me.
S&W M&P 15/22
Threaded Mode
