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DANISH TRADITIONS

How Danes are defying government to mark scrapped holiday Great Prayer Day

A significant number of schools and businesses in Denmark have closed for Great Prayer Day, which is no longer a national holiday after the government changed the law last year.

Published: 26 April 2024 10:48 CEST
How Danes are defying government to mark scrapped holiday Great Prayer Day
A large batch of Great Prayer Day 'hveder' about to be baked in 2023. Photo: Ida Marie Odgaard/Ritzau Scanpix

Even though Great Prayer Day is no longer a public holiday it is still being observed in various ways across Denmark.

The government last year passed a bill to abolish Great Prayer Day in a controversial move which was opposed by large sections of parliament and the public.

On what would have been the 2024 Great Prayer Day Holiday, a sizeable number of businesses around the country have decided to give their employees a paid day off, media including DR and Avisen Danmark report.

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“When the government decides to take something away from my employees, I want to  give it back, and I stand by that,” Paw Kristensen, owner of Kolding transport firm 3P Logistics, told Avisen Danmark.

Kristensen explained he had given half his staff the day off on Friday, while the remainder would be given a day off on a different date. The decision will reportedly cost the company around 100,000 kroner.

A count by Radio4 meanwhile found that 11 of Denmark’s 98 municipalities have opted to close schools today.

An additional school day was not necessarily desirable because children must not attend school on more than 200 days during a year, according to Henrik Madsen, the head of schools in Furesø, one of the municipalities to close on Friday.

“If we’d given the students another school day on Great Prayer Day, they’d have had to have the day of at another time. And we concluded overall that the distribution of school days and non-school days that we already have was the best for the current school year,” he said to Radio4.

Great Prayer Day is well known for the custom of eating hvede – cardamom-infused wheat buns with a generous spreading of butter and sometimes jam. Traditionally, bakers were not allowed to work on the holiday, so they made the wheat buns on Thursday to be reheated the following day.

Bakeries were continuing to mass produce the buns on Friday, with around three million produce by the Kohlberg company according to TV Syd.

The owner of a bakery in western city Esbjerg told DR that hvede sales were up compared to last year.

“Last year we sold between 12,000 and 13,000 hveder. This year, we’ve turned it up to 17,000,” Mark Mikkelsen, head baker and director at the town’s Guldægget bakery said.

“I get the impression that people are a bit agitated about the holiday being taken away from them and the only thing they can hang on to is the hveder,” he said.

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For members

DANISH TRADITIONS

Why do the Danes take such long summer holidays?

Summer in Denmark means workplaces emptying for weeks on end and a flood of 'out of office' replies from colleagues and clients taking lengthy vacations. But have you ever wondered exactly how summer holidays of at least three weeks became so entrenched in Danish society?

Published: 2 July 2024 16:19 CEST
Why do the Danes take such long summer holidays?

The word sommerferielukket, meaning ‘closed for summer’ is something you’ll see on signs in hair salons, cafes, shops, libraries, and other businesses throughout July and sometimes beyond.

Denmark’s long summer holidays are written into law: most employers are legally obliged to allow their workers to take three consecutive weeks off in the summer. Naturally many of them jump at the chance, particularly if they have small children, whose børnehave (kindergarten) will also be sommerferielukket.

Some large Danish companies meanwhile halt operations over summer, and small business owners often decide to do the same. Authorities like municipal offices can also shut down non-essential services.

This all adds up to a strange feeling of emptiness in the bigger cities in July in particular, as those who haven’t gone abroad will often head to their rural summer houses. And the summer closures can be frustrating to those who aren’t used to the system, especially since they coincide with the tourist season.

All the same, it’s good to be aware of the custom so you don’t get caught out when that restaurant or shop you really wanted to visit is closed for the rest of the month.

READ ALSO: Five Danish phrases you only hear in summer

History

The right to take a long summer holiday that we take for granted today, did not come to Denmark until 1938. 

During the first half of the 20th century, as the agricultural sector diminished, an increase in young people who were finishing school, moved from the countryside to larger cities to find work. The new workers formed trade unions, which, among other things, fought for reduced working hours and later for the right to a holiday.

In 1919, the trade unions succeeded in getting working hours reduced to 50.5 hours a week with Sundays off. Then in 1938 they got the first holiday law passed (ferieloven). The holiday law gave all Danes the right to two weeks’ holiday a year. 

The law progressed into the creation of the organisation, ‘People’s Holiday’ (Folkeferie), which was formed to support and provide holiday opportunities for workers, so they had somewhere to go on holiday. During the 1960s and 1970s Danes then started building their own summer houses, as the welfare state grew.

The trade unions continued to negotiate during the following decades and in 1979, there was an agreement to five weeks of holiday. A major revision of the holiday law soon followed, so that all Danes were not only given the right, but also the duty, to take five weeks’ holiday. 

A new holiday act was passed in 2018 and implemented in September 2020, around a new concept of concurrent holidays. This allows employees to earn 2.08 holiday days each month, which they have access to use immediately, as opposed to the old scheme where workers earned holiday days for the following year.

READ ALSO: What are the rules for taking annual leave in Denmark?

The Danish Holiday Act (Ferieloven)

The Danish Holiday Act covers most salaried employees for five standard weeks (normally 25 days) of paid vacation. Holiday earned during a given month can be used from the very next month, in a rule referred to as concurrent holiday (samtidighedsferie). You can check how much holiday you have accrued and are therefore entitled to take at a given time by logging in to the relevant section of the borger.dk portal.

The vacation year is broken down so that there is a “main holiday period” (hovedferie in Danish) which starts on May 1st and ends on September 30th. During this time, you are entitled to take three weeks’ consecutive vacation out of your five weeks.

A lot of people take three weeks in a row while others break it up – which is why you often hear Danish people who work full time wishing each other a “good summer holiday” as if it’s the end of the school term.

Outside of the main holiday period, the remaining 10 days of vacation, termed øvrig ferie in Danish, can be taken whenever you like. You can take up to five days together but may also use the days individually.

If your employer wants to decide when you should take any of your vacation days, they have to let you know at least three months in advance for the main holiday, or one month in advance for remaining holiday, except for exceptional circumstances.

If you have not earned paid vacation, you still have the right to take unpaid holiday. However, people whose right to work in Denmark is dependent on a sponsored visa or other form of work permit should check whether their visa allows them to take unpaid leave, since this may not be the case.

READ ALSO: Feriepenge: Denmark’s vacation pay rules explained

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