Holiday Hours: Christmas & New Year's

You once could be fined for celebrating Christmas in Massachusetts. (Massachusetts State Library)

Businesses, schools and government offices will be taking breaks next week as the nation celebrates Christmas and New Year's. Christmas falls on Monday, Dec. 25, 2023, and New Year's Day on Monday, Jan. 1, 2024. 

Christmas is now a state holiday but it wasn't always. The General Court under the control of the Puritans outlawed the holiday in 1659.

There was too much eating, drinking, wassailing and other festiveness for the colony's righteous rulers. Even after the ban was lifted, Christmas was treated as a regular day until its popularization during the Victorian era. Thank goodness. Can you imagine Norman Rockwell not painting Stockbridge at Christmas?

The Puritans weren't big on New Year's either, preferring to eschew partying for quiet reflection. They did, however, like a good resolution, as Stockbridge's the Rev. Jonathan Edwards proved a prime example (70!).

Schools and public colleges are closed for Christmas vacation, with some local school systems being closed or having a half-day on Friday, Dec. 22, and reopening on Tuesday, Jan. 2. 

Christmas Day, Dec. 25
(Most stores close early on the Dec. 24, some restaurants and bars may be open later)

Closed
Liquor stores
Businesses
Most retail (convenience stores & gas station may have limited hours)Local, state and federal offices
Post offices (reopen and mail delivery on Dec. 26 and Jan. 2)
Public libraries
Schools
Banks
Stock market
Museums

NOTE: BRTA will not operate on Monday, Dec. 25. BRTA office also closed on Friday, Dec. 23.

Open
Cinemas
Ski areas
Convenience stores

Public libraries
Schools
Banks
Stock market
Museums

NOTE: BRTA will not be operating on Monday, Jan. 1, 2024.

Open
Cinemas
Ski areas
Convenience stores

North Adams Hopes to Transform Y Into Community Recreation Center

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:19AM / Thursday, May 02, 2024

Mayor Jennifer Macksey updates members of the former YMCA on the status of the roof project and plans for reopening. 

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The city has plans to keep the former YMCA as a community center.

 

"The city of North Adams is very committed to having a recreation center not only for our youth but our young at heart," Mayor Jennifer Macksey said to the applause of some 50 or more YMCA members on Wednesday. "So we are really working hard and making sure we can have all those touch points."

 

The fate of the facility attached to Brayton School has been in limbo since the closure of the pool last year because of structural issues and the departure of the Berkshire Family YMCA in March.

 

The mayor said the city will run some programming over the summer until an operator can be found to take over the facility. It will also need a new name. 

 

"The YMCA, as you know, has departed from our facilities and will not return to our facility in the form that we had," she said to the crowd in Council Chambers. "And that's been mostly a decision on their part. The city of North Adams wanted to really keep our relationship with the Y, certainly, but they wanted to be a Y without borders, and we're going a different direction."

 

The pool was closed in March 2023 after the roof failed a structural inspection. Kyle Lamb, owner of Geary Builders, the contractor on the roof project, said the condition of the laminated beams was far worse than expected. 

 

"When we first went into the Y to do an inspection, we certainly found a lot more than we anticipated. The beams were actually rotted themselves on the bottom where they have to sit on the walls structurally," he said. "The beams actually, from the weight of snow and other things, actually crushed themselves eight to 11 inches. They were actually falling apart. ...