While Retailers Ease Up on Thanksgiving Hours, NFL Makes More Employees Work on Christmas
This year, the NFL scheduled two games on Christmas Day 2021, the Browns vs. Packers at 4:30pm ET and the Cardinals vs. Colts at 8:15. This isn’t the first time the league has scheduled games on the holiday, but until recently Christmas games were much less common. The NFL, which has been around since the 1920s, didn’t host matchups on Christmas Day until 1971, when the league held two playoff games, the Cowboys vs. the Vikings and the Dolphins against the Chiefs. The second game was the longest in NFL history, going to double overtime before the Dolphins prevailed. Because it went on so long, many viewers complained that it interfered with Christmas dinners and intruded on a traditional religious and family holiday.
The NFL would not schedule another Christmas game until 1989. Football owners were careful not to push football on carolers and mirth makers too much, only playing games once every few years until the 2010s, when there were five games on the holiday. In 2016 and 2017, the league held two matchups apiece on Christmas. In 2020, the Saints hosted the Vikings on a Dec. 25th Friday afternoon. Until now, the league has let the NBA dominate Christmas most years, but the revenue they can rake in is proving irresistible to NFL owners.
While the league moves to play more games on Christmas, major retailers who were recently holding Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving Day in the United States have pulled back from the practice. Retail employees who had to forgo turkey dinners with their families so their employers could make a few more bucks have relented. It’s something the NFL should also reconsider.
People who have never worked at major sporting events fail to grasp the huge logistical, time consuming and personnel undertaking pro sports games entail. As someone employed for almost 10 years as an NFL and NHL sports concession vendor, staff have to be there many hours before kickoff or puck drop. The parking lot attendants, beer vendors, commissary porters, line cooks and managers all get going early. A 4:30pm game start means most employees must tell their family to enjoy Christmas without them, they have to go to work. No wonder it’s difficult for managers to find enough people to staff these events on a holiday.
In nineteenth century writer Charles Dickens’ famous novel A Christmas Carol, notoriously greedy and miserly boss Ebenezer Scrooge grumbles when his employee Bob Crachit requests a customary paid Christmas Day off. “You’ll want all day tomorrow I suppose” Scrooge huffs. When Crachit protests that it’s only once a year, Scrooge answers, “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket…but I suppose you must have the whole day.” Scrooge later encounters four ghosts who eventually alter his outlook. NFL employees and support staff probably wish the league’s owners would, like Scrooge, have a change of heart and let them celebrate Christmas with their families.
-Jeff Dahlberg
Twitter: @JeffDahlberg3