With governments globally casting about to plug state deficits and gee-up growth, the idea of cutting public holidays can seem an enticingly quick fix. In the past few years, Denmark and Slovakia have ...

Opposition parties in parliament, bishops at Denmark’s state church as well as labor union leaders have protested and almost 500,000 Danes had signed an online petition to keep the holiday.

In Denmark, the milk and rice are brought to a boil on the stove, and then the pot is swathed in a towel and wrapped for several hours in a duvet, where residual heat finishes the cooking .

Denmark’s government hopes the additional tax revenue from abolishing the holiday will help it reach a longstanding NATO target of spending 2% of its GDP on defense. Few European countries hit ...

The proposal would also help Denmark as it seeks to increase military spending to 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, as is required for all members of NATO, though in reality ...