Dead week and the myth of unproductive holidays

Dead week and the myth of unproductive holidays

As the old year melts into the new, there’s the compulsion to meet friends and family, engage in unnecessary socialising, drink unreasonably.

The week between Christmas and New Year is unofficially termed “Dead Week”, and not because of the hangovers. It’s the week when most office workers do little that is “productive”. The idea is that ambition takes a backseat in the holiday season, and people don’t do any more work than is absolutely required. While this concept may have originated in the West, it is now ubiquitous in Indian corporate culture as well, with MNCs allowing their employees one week of relief — or deadness — as this name suggests. What may yet be required, though, is to attend office parties and come up with the not-too-expensive-yet-thoughtful Secret Santa gift. Then there’s the compulsion to meet friends and family, engage in unnecessary socialising, and drink unreasonably.

But imagine obediently spending a whole evening with chachi/chinnamma/chitta/kaaki/cheriyamma droning on about her Tinu’s phoren promotion. Isn’t that work? Plotting an escape past the jolly drunk uncles is probably the most painstakingly thorough planning many do all year. It takes its own kind of work to be a good family member, who is, much like a good employee, part of an organisation. Being at leisure is also work when you don’t live in a “good fences make good neighbours” society because there are no fences to begin with, with neighbours or family.

And while this may be a dead week in terms of working it is certainly not one in terms of spending. Spending on the gifts, the wine, the sweaters and spreading all that merry holiday cheer. Come the new year, the new you returns to work exhausted from the spending and socialising to be rejuvenated only by the idea of more earning. Maybe it is the spent social battery that lends itself to the deadness, or the continuous smiling as if on stage at your own wedding reception. Either way, calling this the “dead week” may be apt — not because of the unproductivity, but rather, for the productivity of it all.