Many of us know the importance of the holidays and what it means to be gathered around the table with your family sharing this moment in the year. Sometimes, however, not everyone can make it to the reunion due to travel delays, illness and things of that nature.

But now more than ever it seems family members are missing from the table, not because of the usual reasons, but because they have work. In our modern age the idea of working on holidays has become common practice, but there was indeed a time when something like this was very out of the ordinary. 

The point in all this is to ask the question: Should people work on holidays?

To start off what are the negatives of working on the holidays? For most this is an obvious answer: You won’t be able to see your family, which is, in my opinion, a good reason. Business, in my opinion, should never come before family otherwise the family structure starts to question the absence.

These questions could be anything from “Why wouldn’t you take time off?” or “Don’t you care about your family?” or things of that nature. These cause tension to build up to some degree in the family and that’s never good, especially if the relative isn’t home that often.

Next come the positives. I myself have worked in retail and I have worked on holidays, despite disliking the idea of not being home on said holiday. My reason for being there was simple. The store I worked at gave a pay raise on holidays.

This is where the conflict begins. For most people these days retail jobs are the only form of work they can come across and they’ll pick up any extra hour they know they need to pay bills or even take care of a family. These pay raises are also rare for some retail companies and offer a tantalizing offer to workers who often can’t pass up the offer because they know it will benefit them in the long run. Knowing the positive and negative sides of this, I return to the original question regarding should employees work holidays?

The only conclusion I can reasonably reach is if they really need to.

For some it’s not hard to see that life can be a bit challenging and sometimes we have to scrape by with what we have and do what we have to get by. Now that may sound a bit melodramatic (and considering the topic it almost is), but that’s just a fact of life. Sometimes we simply have to take the tough or time-consuming jobs to get what we need to maintain a stable lifestyle.

So if you are planning on working a holiday in the near future, know your reason for doing so because what motivates you to work, that drive, the spark will make you feel much better while you do it.

But if you feel you can spare the time, definitely spend some time with your family if that’s what you really want. After all, we don’t always get the same experience twice when it comes to family.