Denmark's Great Prayer Day restoration would cost families 4,000 kroner a year, industry group calculates

• DI estimates the productivity loss at over 4,000 kroner per family per year
• The holiday was abolished in 2023 by the Frederiksen government to fund defence spending
• Multiple parties are campaigning to restore it, but none have addressed who pays
• The cost falls on workers through lower wages, employers through reduced output, or taxpayers through higher public sector expenses

Restoring Denmark's Store Bededag (Great Prayer Day) as a public holiday would cost Danish families more than 4,000 kroner per year, according to calculations by the Dansk Industri (Confederation of Danish Industry, DI). Søren Kryhlmand of DI told Ekstra Bladet that this figure is "totally absent" from the political debate — a pointed observation during an election campaign where multiple parties are competing to promise the holiday back.

The Frederiksen government abolished Store Bededag in 2023, scrapping a holiday that dated back to 1686. The rationale was straightforward: one fewer day off meant more hours worked, generating additional tax revenue to fund Denmark's NATO-driven defence spending increase. The decision provoked public fury disproportionate to a single Friday off work. Danes saw it as the government reaching into their calendar to extract productivity — which is precisely what it was. Now the backlash has become campaign currency, with parties across the spectrum pledging to return the holiday as though it were a gift they could hand voters at no charge.

DI's intervention strips that illusion away. A public holiday is not a day that vanishes from the economy; it is a day where output drops while fixed costs remain. The 4,000-kroner figure represents the per-family share of that lost production. Someone absorbs it. Workers could accept marginally lower real wage growth. Employers could eat the reduced output. Or the public sector — Denmark's largest employer — could simply spend more to deliver the same services with fewer working days, passing the bill to taxpayers. None of the parties championing restoration have specified which of these options they prefer, because specifying would make the promise less popular.

The original abolition was itself a case study in how Nordic governments fund new commitments. Rather than cutting existing spending or raising taxes explicitly, the Frederiksen government found a way to extract revenue that looked like a scheduling change rather than a tax increase. Workers lost a day off; the treasury gained the output. Reversing the decision means reversing the fiscal arithmetic — roughly 3 billion kroner in annual production that has to come from somewhere else, or simply go missing.

Danish voters will decide whether a Friday in spring is worth 4,000 kroner. The parties asking for their votes would prefer they never do that math.

Sources: Ekstra Bladet