Why is January 1st a working day in Sri Lanka?

2017 was lucky .. January 1st was a Sunday. But normally, people start work on Jan 1 and have a traditional “kiribath mese”:

My question is: Why the 1st?

January 1st is not our traditional new year day — Sinhala and Tamil New Year falls in April as we follow the lunar calendar. So its not really traditional.

Its not a working day in US and I believe all over Europe. It appears to be a “restricted holiday” in India and a holiday in China (according to Google).

We Sri Lankans get a holiday when the moon is full, when pretty much any religious dude (or gal) had an important (or pseudo important) event in their life and generally feel bad if any of these fall during the weekend and immediately get compensating holidays in the immediately prior or following working days.

Just to give an example: in Feb 2017 we have two long weekends coming up and most likely it’ll become three: Independence day falls on Saturday February 4th and of course we just can’t have that. Read that and weep you Americans!

So, why in the world do we force people to get up and go to work on January 1? More and more people celebrate 31st night by staying up through the nite partying and um, drinking. Pretty hard to get up and be at work at 9am on the 1st and be all chipper!

I can’t see any rational reason as to why we don’t start on the 2nd and make the 1st a public holiday. Its not like we’re shy to give public holidays. Starting on the 1st is certainly not old tradition and the people who set our newer traditions (Portugese, Dutch, British) apparently don’t work on January 1 either. And in April, during our traditional new year period, its nearly impossible to get people back to work — you have to have the special bath, put oil on your head, wait for the stars to line up etc. etc.!

So, why?? If you know the answer please write a comment!