Dealing with “fake holidays”,
From a stress point of view, fake holidays are an unusual occurrence and tend to happen only in multinational corporations, where you can have multiple regional or religious holidays that only affect one area or country. This means that while you’re away, the work just piles up at exactly the same rate as if you were there. Thus when you come back. you end up with exactly the same amount of work as if you had not taken the time off. But you have to do it in a shorter period of time, meaning that essentially the holiday is pointless because you’re even more frazzled than you were originally.
It turns out that the solution to this is quite simple. You treat the holiday as if it’s a formal personal holiday. You prep people for it. You inform them and you behave as if it’s a hard paid time off, rather than merely an assumed holiday because the rest of your country/religion/group is taking it.
The perfect example of this being implemented is in a lot of continental Europe. They have a lot of their public holidays on a Tuesday or a Thursday, and they tend to bridge them, so if they have them on a Tuesday, they take a Monday as paid time off. and then they inform everybody that they are taking both days off, this seems to work. People think of it in terms of a group of people taking paid time off, rather than a sudden surprise holiday that they haven’t catered for.
That’s it. Treat them as if they are paid time off and not a generalised holiday, such as New Year or the Christian Christmas, and you will find less work piles up.
Evil footnote: A useful side note to this situation is that this also helps you identify those who are not thinking in broader terms than just their part of the world. A good example is the recent Diwali holiday. This is as serious as Christmas or Ramadan. But you meet people who think of it in terms of only: “I wont get what I want from India today”, Such people are to be watched and encouraged to get up to speed.