What’s really behind Schmitt’s push to make ‘Easter Monday’ a federal holiday? | Opinion

Sen. Eric Schmitt wants to give you an extra day off. Sounds great, right?

Too bad there’s a culture-war string attached.

The Missouri Republican last week announced a new bill to make the Monday after Easter — “Easter Monday” — a federal holiday. It’s “pro-faith, pro-family, and pro-worker” proposal to give Americans a three-day holiday in the long stretch between the Christmas holidays and Memorial Day.

Pro-worker? I’ll buy that, for reasons we’ll get to in a bit.

But pro-faith?

It kind of depends on whose faith we’re talking about, doesn’t it?

And indeed, if you guessed that Schmitt’s proposal is mostly about pushing a bit of Christian nationalism on the rest of the country, you’re probably not wrong.

“Our holidays and traditions are part of the story we tell about ourselves,” he said in a thread last week on X, the social media platform. “This is not partisan. It’s not a ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat’ holiday. It’s an American holiday, allowing a fuller celebration of the defining moment of the faith that shaped our nation and civilization.”

It may not be partisan, but it’s definitely political.

Different ways of doing Easter

Let’s back up. If this all sounds a bit odd to you — if, like me, you haven’t heard anybody clamoring for an Easter Monday holiday until now — well, Schmitt says he has the numbers on his side.

“81% of Americans celebrate Easter,” the senator wrote. The holiday “already unites more than three-quarters of Americans.”

Maybe. Schmitt’s data comes from the National Federation of Retailers, whose recent survey ahead of this year’s Easter holiday told a somewhat more nuanced story.

Fifty-four percent of Americans with kids say they expected to participate in an Easter egg hunt at home.

Just 45% of Americans planned to attend church.

Which suggests that Schmitt is maybe overselling how much Easter actually “unites” us.

Some of us want to celebrate one of the most holy days on the Christian calendar. And some of us just want to eat Peeps.

And some of us find a third way. I grew up and was baptized in a fundamentalist Christian church that didn’t observe any religious holiday whatsoever. (I remain fuzzy on the theology behind this, admittedly.)

Easter? That was for other folks.

Schmitt’s proposal of an “American” holiday wouldn’t have much room for that kind of Christian, would it?

Then again, it might not have room for a lot of folks who do celebrate Easter religiously, many of whom — if they’re going to get a three-day weekend — would prefer to get Good Friday off.

“They can’t even do Christian nationalism right,” a colleague snarked after hearing about Schmitt’s proposal.

Three-day weekend for workers

Despite all this, I’m intrigued by the idea of Easter Monday. As Schmitt points out, the holiday would come at a time on the calendar when there isn’t much opportunity for rest.

“The only two-month gap in our federal holiday calendar is April-May,” he wrote. “An Easter Monday holiday fills the gap — creating a three-day weekend when workers and families need it most.”

Which is almost compelling. It’s just that there’s too much about Schmitt’s proposal that seems intended to divide and exclude.

His talk of Easter as an “American holiday” sure seems to link the idea of American-ness to the senator’s own particular vision of faith. That necessarily excludes Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and everybody else who doesn’t share that vision.

Which seems to be the point.

Easter Sunday is not “some boutique left-wing micro-holiday, commemorating ‘Trans Visibility’ or ‘Indigenous Mourning,’” Schmitt wrote in that X thread.

Which kind of gives the game away.

If Schmitt wants American workers to have the day off, he should just work to give them a day off. Everything else is just an attempt to assert right-wing dominance.

This story was originally published April 21, 2025 at 1:54 PM.