No one wants to be stuck behind a desk and a laptop when the sun is blazing outside. The allure of lazy summer days is tempting enough if you work in the UK, never mind France, Italy, Spain or Portugal…

Which is precisely why during August – or what’s commonly known as ‘silly season’ – you might struggle to get hold of one or two of your European colleagues. During the hot summer months, towns, villages and even cities traditionally ‘shut down’, leaving mostly mad dogs and Englishmen to roam the streets.

At present, under the EU’s working time directive, employees in all European Union countries are entitled to at least 4 weeks’ paid annual leave. In the US, there is no guarantee that employees will receive any paid holidays (nor public holidays) whatsoever. Time off may be granted around Christmas and Thanksgiving, but the days taken off will not necessarily be paid. The standard holiday entitlement in the US is typically two weeks.

In China, extra days of holiday are issued and added on to the nation’s main holidays to round them up to a full week. However, these additional days are compensated for by official working days on Saturdays or Sundays.

Japan and Canada are also on the ‘hard-done-by’ end of the holiday scale, with 18-20 days’ holiday, while France comes out top with 25 days paid annual leave.

In the west, public holidays generally revolve around Christian religious days (such as Christmas and Easter) plus days commemorating each nation’s historical events (Bastille, Republic, Independence, etc.). In the East, national holidays largely revolve around ‘festivals’, which tend to be grounded in religion, superstition or myth. Unlike the Gregorian calendar used in the West, these celebrations are guided by the lunar calendar. In China, for instance, the most notable are the Lunar (Chinese) New Year, and the National Day holiday, which each last one ‘Golden Week’.

However, in all countries, not all holiday days are fixed and can ‘move’: public holidays may or may not, therefore, fall on a weekday.

Navigating these holidays can be tricky. So we’ve listed the key public holidays for some countries below to help you plan your schedule.

Bonnes vacances, wherever you are!

Source: http://cepr.net/publications/reports/no-vacation-nation