Well, since that part of the year when most holidays are occuring are near, I thought I'd share this enlightening article from the Economist:
"Employees in European countries tend to have a better deal than most, enjoying more days off work than their counterparts in Asia or America. Workers in Finland, France and Brazil have the most generous statutory allowance, getting 30 days of holiday every year. Americans work longer hours: theirs is the only rich country that does not give any statutory paid holiday. (In practice, most workers get around 15 days off.) This work ethic may in turn help to explain Americans' material wealth. Even adjusting for purchasing-power parity, America generates more wealth per person than all but a handful of mainly oil-rich economies such as Norway."
Basically, what the article is saying is that it seems the less holidays a country has, the richer the country is (the Economist webpage has an excellent graph). I mean, when I noticed that there's not much holidays here in the U.S. and there's a ton in the Philippines (the Philippine president can declare a holiday--even only a week in advance), I suspect that's there's a correlation somewhere.
It could be more intuitive than you would initially thought. I mean, there is really a trade-off--a day of holiday is a day without production. Thus decreasing the overall GDP for the year. Go figure.