The GEM Debate:
Should The Monday After Super Bowl Sunday Be A Holiday?

If you are reading this from your office you may automatically agree that today should be a day of rest.  You are tired, you may have over indulged in some adult beverages, and your conversation is sprinkled with Monday morning quarterbacking such that productivity is at a minimum.  So what should we do about it?  Make the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday!

That’s right.  You heard me (sorry if the yelling bothers you).  Josh Moore, a fantasy football league owner, is proposing just that.  Mondays after the Super Bowl are hard and so Moore has officially started a petition to keep us from having to drag our weary, tired, partied-out bodies to work after the festivities.  He’s not alone.  He’s gotten about ten percent of his 100,000 signatures needed for the petition and if he could somehow get everyone in America to see the petition today (oh, great idea for him to have a Super Bowl ad) he’d have his work done and he could in deed take today off for other less awake pursuits.

My thought is that he’s right; people are less productive the day after the Super Bowl.  However, I don’t think the idea will get the legs it needs nationally.  As far as I can tell those people in the Pacific Time Zone aren’t as affected by the game’s late hour so they may support it, but I can see that being an argument against it.  Also, national holidays shut down our financial systems.  The day after a Super Bowl is hardly the day you want people to think about not spending money.  The Super Bowl is geared towards spending money and lots of it.  Of course, our purchases can be made more online now so that may not have too much of an impact, but tell the people at Taco Bell who just spent all that money trying to make us want their food that we are going to close down for a day.  They are going to want that lunch crowd in their establishments pretty quickly I’d think.  There is also the telecommuting shift the country is making.  No, we might not get a whole day off, but maybe working in your pajamas makes it a little easier to make you productive.  If companies can get even the smallest amount of work out of you they will make that compromise.  The Super Bowl is set right smack dab in a hotspot of holidays.  Maybe if it were played in August people would see a need, but with Christmas, New Years, MLK, and President’s Day being so close I wouldn’t think another holiday during this time of year would be warranted.

Now, there is, of course, something you can do if you really want to support your team, be a good employee and only come in when you are one-hundred percent, etc.  You can take a vacation day.  Um hum.  If you know that you are just not going to be in the mood after a night of revelry then taking a day that the company provides might be the answer.  You might even want to campaign your place of employment for one extra personal day on the books for this purpose.  That way whoever isn’t a football fan (yes, those people exist) can pick their own day to be absent; I don’t know maybe after a wild kid’s birthday party or some such.

This doesn’t take into account our younger football fanatics.  My mom used to love letting us stay up to watch the game and I hear there’s a teen in the GEM household who is wishing today weren’t a school day.  Not sure what to tell them except these are the problems of life and if you know you have to be up with the larks you might not want to hoot with the owls.  Hey, I’m a new mom.  That’s the best I have for them right now.  I was up late watching a football game.

So what about you?  Do you think that there should be a national holiday today?  Did you make plans and take today off?  Not a football fan and could care less?  Let us know in the comments!

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Ella Rucker is the mother of one of the smartest, funniest two-year-olds she’s ever met.  She is currently assistant to the head GEM which means hats-a-plenty including writing, editing, and producing for Good Enough Mother.  An Ohio native implanted in NYC for the last 13 years, Ella has achieved one of her many dreams by writing.  Her musings (she’s amused they’d be called “musings”) can be found at other places on the web so make sure you follow her on twitter @ellalaverne for all the information.