When Should Christian Schools Have Spring Break?

There is nothing penitential about spring break. No matter how much a student or teacher loves school, a week off comes as a welcome relief.   

To have spring break during Lent throws off the spiritual discipline of that solemn season. It is hard to remember why or even that you gave up coffee, sugar, or social media while sunbathing on the beach. 

Instead of following the public school calendar, Christian schools should be unabashedly liturgical and take the Octave of Easter for spring break. What joy fills the soul when school is cancelled! This elation of spirit ought to coincide with the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, and the Christian school should give its faculty and families time to enjoy the full eight days of Christ’s rising from the dead. 

There are also practical considerations that favor moving spring break to the Octave of Easter. Public schools usually have “spring break” before the spring equinox, so it technically falls during the wintertime. The weather is more reliable in April, which carries a better guarantee of warmth and sunshine during the break. Rather than freezing on the beach in March and competing with the rest of the world for Airbnbs for the same week, Christians could save money by waiting till April, when the beaches are warmer and less crowded. 

The otherworldliness of the liturgical year should neither surprise nor vex us. Our Lord told His disciples, “Amen, amen I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy” (John 16:20 [DRA]). 

The world is always trying to subvert the Church’s calendar, and this is particularly true of parties during Advent and Lent. Joseph Shaw articulates this in his article “What is Septuagesima?”: 

Advent, the penitential season before Christmas, is too often a period of party-going and indulgence. Lent is pretty well the only annual, sustained attempt at penance . . . . Even this can be besieged by the secular world’s attempts to turn it into a chocolate-eating season. 

Not only does the world want to turn penance into parties, but it also strives to make seasons of feasting into times of fasting: Dry January occurs in the middle of the forty days of Christmas, and the push to “get beach body ready” arrives in May, when we should still be celebrating Easter, which extends until Pentecost. 

The real question is whether Christian schools should lead or follow. Should we uncritically accept the secular calendar or follow the Church’s and take the consequences?  Do not be anxious; be consoled by our Lord, who said, “If the world hates you, know ye, that it hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18–19 [DRA]). Join our Lord on His sorrowful journey this Lent, and rejoice with Him in Eastertide.