With Christmas 1995 over, Jennifer Mayrovitz got a jump yesterday on next year's holiday -- by opening a new Christmas savings club account.
Beyond that chore, Mrs. Mayrovitz of Columbia's Village of Owen Brown took off from work on what may have been the biggest unofficial holiday this year -- Dec. 26. Like her, many Howard County residents took the day off to spend time with family, take advantage of sales and return unwanted presents.
"It's been true forever," Dallas Salisbury, president of the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C., said of the day after Christmas. "In the good old days, a good number of businesses would close totally between Christmas and New Year's."
Many workers also take the day off because "we're terrible planners when it comes to our vacation," Mr. Salisbury said. Those who don't heed their bosses' advice to use their vacation during the year can be confronted with a "use it or lose it" policy.
But Mrs. Mayrovitz had done her planning. In the gripping cold outside the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel -- where her credit union is located -- the day care center operator hurried to her Chrysler with her three children in tow.
"Usually, I take this whole week off so I can spend time with my children," she said.
Others rushed to area malls and shopping centers, where they searched for parking spaces and sales. After finding a parking spot at The Mall in Columbia, Barbara Hackett of Ellicott City said she planned to shop for "whatever is 50 percent off."
But there were those who had to work. At the county planning and zoning offices, Tony Wilson, a planning technician, estimated that one-fourth of the workers in his office stayed home. He said he went to work because he likes his job and wanted to talk to people about their holiday.
"You really can get the impact of Christmas the day after Christmas," he said. "It's like dropping a bomb."
