I suspect that I've heard the same thing, that summers were vacations for children because they were needed to help parents with farming chores during the summer. I have no idea if that's true or not, but if it is then I imagine a low technology world would not follow culture custom so much as the behavior of the local climate - when they spread to the opposite hemisphere the vacation days would flip 180 degrees out of phase of the originating hemisphere. Once tech level rises to the point that work is distributed more evenly though the year there's less of a need to follow climate and probably more of a desire to follow custom.

-------- Original Message --------

On February 19, 2018 1:59 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

I've read a lot about how it came to be that students in the northern hemisphere get a break from school during the summer but

I've always wondered about european-influenced societies in the southern hemisphere.

Frankly, I don't even know what sort schedule schools follow 'down under'.

Would anyone care to elaborate?

I can remember, as a child, thinking that it would be a little weird to experience a 'hot' Xmas & 'cold' Independence (USA) Day!