Yes. I know.Actually, there are something like ten HDOs, and the Canon that governs them allows some of them to be abrogated when an episcopal conference petitions the Holy See.
There are only two places in the world where all ten are celebrated as HDOs, the Vatican City and some diocese of Switzerland.
It is a coincidence that you mention those, because I have a particular fondness for those very days as well and have collected both the original latin and english adaptations for nearly all the office propers for those days including some obscure hymns and sequences.In the first half (or so) of the 20th century Epiphany was kind of like St. Patrick’s Day, St. Lucy’s Day, St. Nicholas Day, or St. Joseph’s Day.
taken from: The phoenix and the flame: Catalonia and the Counter ReformationConsiderable difficulty was experienced, in a pre-industrial Spain which had no strict division between labour and leisure, in enforcing holy days of obligation as days of rest. As we have seen, from one-third to one half of the days in the year were holidays, and once the duty of attending mass had been fulfilled many saw no harm in continuing secular duties, even on holidays. This indeed had been normal practice, the provincial council of Seville in 1512 specifying for instance that the ban on work applied to the period of mass alone. Later opinion tended to favour a complete ban on work during feast-days. In April 1600, the bishop of Barcelona complained that some fail to observe Sundays and days of obligation, labouring, digging, sowing and doing other similar servile duties, and ordered that on days of obligation traders should not keep their shops completely open, nor put stands outside; but only seven months later in November he was obliged to return to the problem of the ‘great abuse among works, shopkeepers and artisans…keeping their shops open and causing scandal in the city’, and imposed a fine of 5£ for any future infringements. The scan attention paid to Church discipline is proved by bishop Rovirola issuing exactly the same order in August 1604. It was recognized that some of the functions needed to be carred on regulary, but in 1610 the bishop of Barcelona commented on ‘the abuses committed in granting to workers a license to work on days of rest’. In the synod of Urgell that year the clergy observed that ‘on Sundays and holydays of obligation the people work publicly and violete the feast-days.’ In 1641 the bishop of Solsona stated that ‘we are informed that the feasts ordered by the Church are not observed.’
The idea of having 44 holy days of obligation is more what I am used to, but at the same time, it’s not likely that one could not work on all those days. The idea of relaxing the strictness for work makes sense (but than one would also relax abstinence of food or relations). This concept of days of obligation is over my head and I admit it. I do not understand how to handle it. I would make a bad bishop.The Decree of Gratian (about 1150) mentions forty-one feasts besides the diocesan patronal celebrations; the Decretals of Gregory IX (about 1233) mention forty-five public feasts and Holy Days, which means eighty-five days when no work could be done and ninety-five days when no court sessions could be held. In many provinces eight days after Easter, in some also the week after Pentecost (or at least four days), had the sabbath rest. From the thirteenth to the eighteenth century there were dioceses in which the Holy Days and Sundays amounted to over one hundred, not counting the feasts of particular monasteries and churches. In the Byzantine empire there were sixty-six entire Holy Days (Constitution of Manuel Comnenus, in 1166), exclusive of Sundays, and twenty-seven half Holy Days. In the fifteenth century, Gerson, Nicolas de Clémanges and others protested against the multiplication of feasts, as an oppression of the poor, and proximate occasions of excesses. The long needed reduction of feast days was made by Urban VIII (Universa per orbem, 13 Sept., 1642). There remained thirty-six feasts or eighty-five days free from labour. Pope Urban limited the right of the bishops to establish new Holy Days; this right is now not abrogated, but antiquated. A reduction for Spain by Benedict XIII (1727) retained only seventeen feasts; and on the nineteen abrogated Holy Days only the hearing of Mass was obligatory. This reduction was extended (1748) to Sicily. For Austria (1745) the number had been reduced to fifteen full Holy Days; but since the hearing of Mass on the abrogated feasts, or half Holy Days, the fast on the vigils of the Apostles were poorly observed, Clement XIV ordered that sixteen full feasts should be observed; he did away with the half Holy Days, which however continued to be observed in the rural districts (peasant Holy Days, Bauernfeiertage). The parish priests have to say Mass for the people on all the abrogated feasts. The same reduction was introduced into Bavaria in 1775, and into Spain in 1791; finally Pius VI extended this provision to other countries and provinces.