I assume our family is not unusual in using the few days of peace and quiet between Christmas and New Year to start planning our holidays for the coming year. In this uniquely pleasurable endeavour, our predictable starting point, as for many working parents, is identifying which days we will all have off (from school and work) which don’t require annual leave. Yes! You know which days I mean. Public holidays: the working parents’ bonus.

As I flicked between an online calendar of Berlin public holidays and an excel spreadsheet, ensconced on the settee with a plate of Christmas biscuits beside me, marking the relevant days, smiling at each one conveniently falling on a Monday or Friday and starting to dream of all the interesting lakeside long weekends we could book in, my husband piped up and said, “Did you know that we’re going to get an extra public holiday in Berlin next year?”

This was news to me. As a Brit, I wasn’t even aware that each Bundesland could decide on its own public holidays – beyond a core nine which they all share (New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension, Whitsun, Labour Day, Day of German Unity, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day). But it turns out that along with areas such as schooling, shop closing times, non-smoking zones, amongst others, when and which public holidays are celebrated is decided at the local government level.

Up until now, Berlin has been rather lagging behind. It has just nine public holidays (the least of all the Bundesländer) whilst Bavaria, Baden-Wüttemberg and Saarland have twelve! Exactly which days are celebrated mostly depends on whether the area is traditionally Catholic or Protestant. Bavaria, Baden Wüttemberg, North Rhein Westphalia, Rhineland Palatinate and Saarland all have a day off on 1st November for the Catholic All Souls Day. But Reformation Day is celebrated in Protestant Brandenburg, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpormmern, Lower Saxony, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringa. That Berlin should only have nine is something that local politicians have spent the last few months trying to rectify, thinking up non-religious suggestions which feel significant enough for a local day off.

The day to win the majority of support within Berlin’s current Red-Red-Green coalition (SPD, Linke, die Grünen) is Weltfrauentag (International Women’s Day) on 8th March. Other days in the running were 18th March (marking the March revolution in 1848, 8th May (Tag der Befreiung – the day on which the Wehrmacht surrendered to the Allied Forces in 1945 and celebrated in the GDR as a public holiday between 1950 and 1967) and 9th May (Europatag – the day in 1950 on which Robert Schuman, the then French Foreign Minister, gave an important speech on creating a union between French and German steel and coal producers, largely recognised as one of the foundational building blocks of the European Union). But none of these was quite as straightforward or popular as Weltfrauentag.

In the former Eastern bloc, including East Berlin as the capital of the GDR, Weltfrauentag was of marked socialist significance. This connection may bother some. It was not a feature of my British childhood, but in the last couple of decades International Women’s Day has grown in importance across the globe, gaining support from the UN and Unicef and used to promote women’s rights more broadly. Taking the 8th March as a symbol of the achievements in equality and emancipation, as well as the work still to be done, fits with both the local government coalition’s political identity and an internationally-recognised day of celebration. To us in Berlin the cause seems still a valid one – especially when we look beyond Western Europe – and it is hard to argue against an extra day off! The politicians are desperately managing expectation and writing articles to say that  is not completely certain all the boxes will be checked in time for us to already enjoy it in 2019, so fingers crossed.

Chloë