For the many of us who look for­ward to long week­ends as a re­sult of pub­lic hol­i­days falling on Fri­days or Mon­days, 2024 isn't of­fer­ing too much.

In fact, for those whose work weeks run from Mon­days to Fri­days, you'd be dis­ap­point­ed to know that you're tech­ni­cal­ly los­ing two pub­lic hol­i­days in 2024 be­cause they fall on Sat­ur­days.

By in­clud­ing next Mon­day's New Year's Day with­in the 2024 tal­ly, there are on­ly two long week­ends for the en­tire year due to hol­i­days falling on Mon­days and Fri­days, the sec­ond be­ing East­er week­end.

Yeah, we hear your silent, "Whaaaatt"!!!

But, as if to make up for the loss, 2024 of­fers one juicy ad­di­tion, as both In­di­an Ar­rival Day and Cor­pus Christi fall on the same day next year, Thurs­day May 30, which means the Fri­day will al­so be a hol­i­day to cater for one of them, al­low­ing for a four-day long-week­end for the Mon­day to Fri­day work­ers.

That's a grand to­tal of three...and many of you don't even think New Year's Day should be part of this mix...so yep, we're back to just two long week­ends in 2024.

And it gets worse.

Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day falls flush on the Sat­ur­day of the East­er week­end and to rain more on your pa­rade, In­de­pen­dence Day, Au­gust 31, is al­so a 'Sat­ur­day hol­i­day'.

While these two 'be­tray­ers' of­fer some joy for those who tra­di­tion­al­ly work on Sat­ur­days, to the usu­al Mon­day to Fri­day troop­ers this just means that the usu­al 14 an­nu­al pub­lic hol­i­days have been re­duced to 12 in 2024.

And oh, did we men­tion there are just two long week­ends in there?

Labour Day, Eid (ten­ta­tive­ly) and Christ­mas Day will fall on Wednes­days in 2024, and all oth­er pub­lic hol­i­days are on Tues­days and Thurs­days, just short of the long week­end slot but not quite there.

(And yes, we hear those naughty thoughts that just popped in­to some of your heads.)

Fi­nal­ly, while Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day are con­sid­ered de fac­to days off in T&T, they aren't legal­ly clas­si­fied as pub­lic hol­i­days.

But since many of­fices keep their doors shut on those days, those not par­tic­i­pat­ing in the street pa­rades have an­oth­er chance to run off for a four-day long week­end hol­i­day from Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 10 to Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 13.