Asda is offering workers Nativity leave this Christmas – the only problem is, it's unpaid

Wouldn’t an Asda worker simply use up a day’s paid holiday instead?

Schoolchildren perform in the traditional nativity play (Getty Images)

After all the fuss around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I can reveal that this weekend is Bed-Sheet Saturday and Tea-Towel Sunday, when parents suddenly realise their child is imminently to make their stage debut as Mary/Joseph/the Angel Gabriel/Fourth Sheep in the school nativity play and they need to make a costume.

For my part, I will spend Sunday cutting holes in a white sheet and digging out some gold tinsel to make a halo, as it is our three-year-old’s first nativity play next week. She may only be the “lead angel” (not even the Angel Gabriel, as I initially thought until I read the cast list pinned to the nursery door yesterday, but head of a sort of infant chorus line), yet the pushy parents of Seoul, Shanghai and Tokyo have nothing on my new-found competitive urge to make her nativity costume look amazing.

The tinsel halo is going to be huge, the sewing machine will be out, there may even be smocking. And I will be there to watch her get up on stage, the poor child no doubt struggling under the weight of her halo and her mother’s expectations. I am not going to miss it for anything.

Asda, the supermarket that trumpets how much it cares about family finances with a monthly “Mumdex” to drill down into customers’ concerns, is offering its staff “nativity leave” because it too realises how important this moment is in a child’s (and their parents’) life. The latest Mumdex has shown that one in three working mothers are worried about missing out on the festive school play. Staff will be given time off so they can be there in person to watch their son or daughter be a confused innkeeper or a shepherd who forgets his lines, before posting the footage on Facebook.

So no one feels left out, Asda will also allow childless workers the day off to go Christmas shopping. They don’t even have to give their managers a reason for the time off. Perhaps they could call it Shopping Leave or even Panic Last-Minute Stocking-Filler Leave. At a time when many families don’t feel they have either the time or the money to cope with Christmas, the supermarket chain is radiating festive warmth. Hayley Tatum, Asda’s executive people director (Asda are people people, of course) says: “Nativity Leave gives parents the opportunity to take time off for the school Christmas play or simply for some much needed family time outside of normal holidays.”

Asda should be applauded for attempting to give its workers some breathing space to deal with Christmas, and other companies should follow suit. Its intentions are well-meaning. But there is a snag with Nativity Leave, because staff must take the time off unpaid. This begs the question, wouldn’t an Asda worker, forced to choose between money and time, simply use up a day’s paid holiday instead? Surely their own Mumdex can tell them that, with wages squeezed for the last few years, the idea of losing a day’s pay is as welcome as Herod in the stable.

Must the price of seeing your little one’s star moment, when you are already struggling to pay the bills, be a day’s wages? Perhaps it is too much to ask a firm to give its entire staff an extra day’s paid holiday – although with Asda’s £700m-plus profits, it wouldn’t hurt. Now, where’s that gold tinsel?

Giving Tuesday is a US custom we ought to adopt

If you are perturbed by the way Black Friday and Cyber Monday, huge traditions in the US, have been forced on us in Britain despite them being linked to Thanksgiving, a very un-British holiday, then there is a third big day in the American build-up to Christmas that we should welcome with open arms.

It is Giving Tuesday, but, unlike Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there has been very little coverage over here. It started at a YMCA in New York and is now a nationwide day to encourage people to donate to charity. This year, on Tuesday this week, there was even the hashtag #unselfie to get we self-obsessed Twitter users to think about others for a change.

Nick Hurd, the minister for charities and social enterprise and one of the few members of the Government who still believes in the Big Society, wants the UK to make this a national day. Everybody spends too much at Christmas – on presents, drink and food – so all it would take would be to switch some of that spending to a good cause. Rather than wait until next year, perhaps Mr Hurd can persuade David Cameron to announce a national day next week? At least we wouldn’t be doing it at the same time as the US.