I like this. You'd probably need to specify "limit one," and it may be controversial how to draw lines, but it's weird to me to vote in Diwali, but to exclude other major cultures' holidays in the process.

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Sure, I'm sure there's plenty of solutions that don't allow the state to endorse a religion. The real problem is that they could never make every important religious holiday a state holiday, so by focusing on certain ones they are establishing certain religions over others which is what makes it unconstitutional.

Something like you suggested may be a valid solution except it is discriminatory against minority religions that don't have many participants in our state. I think that's why to be safe, it's best that the state doesn't endorse any religious holidays at all, and we should instead focus on changing attendance policies in schools and in the work place that allow folks time off for religious purposes.

Just to add context, your criteria of 1% of our state's population of 12.97 million is still over 120,000 folks. That's a lot of people who's religious beliefs wouldn't be validated. Sometimes I think when we think of a population percentage, it's easy to dehumanize folks and obfuscate a number of folks by using statistics... Think of how some folks treated the CDC reported 18.2 percent of folks who died from covid. 🤷

We can figure out how to limit or regulate that in a way that's fair for everyone so religious folks don't get more time off than none religious. It may look like a policy that doesn't involve religion at all, but personal free time in general.

I don't want to say force companies to offer payed personal days out loud but....I think we should fight for payed personal days and time off from school. 🤷Work from home and remote learning is doing a lot to make it easier to stay productive, let's use it.

What other benefits do State holidays give us?