The Forgotten Holy Day

On How We have Replaced a Leisure-Culture with a Work-Culture

Planning which day I’ll have enough time to finally make sourdough bread is quite the effort. Calendars must be pulled out, planners checked (and double-checked). Is there somewhere we’re supposed to be? Is it within the resting time for the dough? It can’t be made on Sunday, we have church. But that Saturday is already booked– and so, I keep feeding a sourdough starter, hoping in vain for a day when I will have the time to finally bake the bread. 

Perhaps sourdough bread is a slightly melodramatic example: it does take 14 hours to go through the entire process. But I believe there is a greater truth hidden in the bread, so to speak. There is so little time, once you subtract all the other hours that you spend at work and doing mundane tasks like answering emails, going to meetings, commuting to work, preparing lunch for the next day, and taking that blessed and much-needed shower. If you enjoy perhaps one or two hours of free time in your evenings, maybe you’ll turn on a movie and recuperate. But this is not time well spent. Yet it seems the only activity one can muster the energy to perform. After eight or nine hours of work, it is difficult to sit down and perform a mentally-demanding task: reading a great book, learning a language, writing an article, or generally engaging in what Joseph Pieper terms “leisure” activities.  Instead, one is more likely to engage in “play” activities: watching a movie, scrolling your phone, etc. 

And if you do enjoy many hobbies– walking, playing musical instruments, reading, a sport, entertaining friends, writing, some kind of craft– then you will be familiar with the difficulties that arise in finding the time and energy to engage with any of them. Indeed, it’s easy to blink and a month has passed by, the dust collected on the guitar, and the banana meant for banana bread has gone rotten and been chucked. 

Once, this was not the case. In medieval, Catholic Europe, work was not given the elevated status that it has today. Regardless of how much they worked per day (a number that might be quibbled over and would have depended on the season), Catholic Europe had a culture of holy days. Holy days were devoted to rest, to leisure, to worship, and to community time. They held a special place in the calendar and one worked with the understanding that there was a feast day to celebrate right around the corner. The feasting would offset the “fasting” of their regular lives.

Holy Days

Holy, or feast days, were public celebrations. Each of them carried its own traditions or held special importance in certain places (Scandinavian St. Lucy’s Day or French St. Jean-Baptiste), but they all, at their core, were chances to have fun. They involved performances, revelry, food, and a sacred procession or prayer that consecrated the activity. The day would begin with a mass, participate in a local play, dance in the town square, and finish the night with a hefty dinner of fine meat. The holy day combined the sacred and the profane into one transcending experience: it raised man and brought God down to Earth at the same time.

These holy days first began to decline in the Protestant Reformation: with the significance of the saints lessened, there was no need or desire for holy days. And just as Martin Luther and John Calvin elevated the status of common labor, they devalued the idea of a holy day: a day of rest. Work became holy, as opposed to rest. Besides the obligatory Sunday rest, there was work to be done and there was no time for holy days. In the extreme, we see the Puritan requirement of always being at some kind of work, for “idle hands are the devil’s playthings.”

The disappearance of a leisure, or life-focused culture, rather than a work-focused culture, cannot solely be blamed on what sociologist Max Weber calls the “Protestant Work Ethic”, however. The other main cause of the promotion of more work and less play was the Enlightenment. Even before  the Industrial Revolution came along to harm holy-days again, the Enlightenment was changing fundamental beliefs and assumptions in the culture. Whereas before, you were born and died in the same (generally speaking) socio-economic strata, the Enlightenment offered the opportunity for advancement. If you worked hard enough, or were talented and smart enough (by dedicating yourself to your studies), you could become rich, or powerful. The socio-economic hierarchy became a climbable ladder. And with the dangled promise of more wealth and prestige, the desire for holy-days dwindled out of existence.  You might be able to “cash in” on all that vacation time, after you’d made a name for yourself.

The situation was still not as dire then as it would eventually be. Various other influences have lent their weight to the situation. As time has gone on, and the standard work-week has been established (which, while officially at 40 hours nowadays, seems to be once again on the rise), leisure time became more and more difficult to come by. As companies grew larger, and globalized, concern for individual workers lessened. Corporate policies began to be drafted. Vacations became benefits.

The French Revolution offered the last death blow to public feast holidays, when it replaced the Gregorian, Catholic calendar with its own version of time-keeping. America, founded by Puritan settlers, never used the feast-day calendar, and has since its inception established very few bank holidays. Round-the-clock email access and on-demand entertainment have only contributed to the issue, since now, it really is impossible to be away from work. Of course, the very definition of “work” has also been forced to evolve. Once, work (or labor) was absolutely necessary, tangibly procuring sustenance and shelter. In today’s economy, most work is superfluous and disconnected from material outcomes: providing not for the worker, but for the corporation.

In short, myriad shifts and alterations to culture and civilisation, people find themselves working more, and having less time off than their ancestors. There is no longer time for leisure: and we have forgotten what leisure constitutes. It does not refer to watching films mindlessly, scrolling various social media sites, or playing video games. In the words of every parent ever: “you’re rotting your brain.” Leisure, actually, is activities that contribute to one’s understanding of the arts and sciences, and might therefore contribute to the general knowledge in those areas, as well.

Leisure involves the rigorous use of one’s mental faculties, and it requires attention and dedication. Oftentimes, it is not “fun” in the way that modern people understand things to be “fun”: which translates to instant gratification for little effort. Reading a great book is an arduous process, but it is rewarding.  One feels a sense of completion and achievement upon closing the cover of War and Peace, a feeling that cannot be replicated by completing another level of a video game. Practicing musical instruments or the arts; reading, writing, and participating in the great discussions of Western civilisation; learning mathematics or scientific principles; taking long walks, studying the natural world; and cultivating good tastes in culture, are all examples of worthy leisure activities. And naturally, the greatest of leisure activities: the contemplation of the eternal, through prayer, reading, and meditation.

Leisure is a miniature of the “holy day”: bringing together the profane man and his physical and mental faculties with the divine, eternal truths found in sport, science, and theology. It feeds man every day with the treasure of Heaven which gives him meaning.

In substituting these for the hours spent on phones, one will find a greater sense of peace and meaning. Purpose is found through leisure, not through corporate work-culture. To return to the contemplative, leisurely style of existence is to acknowledge that we do not provide for ourselves.  Work does not guarantee our flourishing in this life, and certainly not in the next life: everything we are given is a gift from God. As Jesus tells us, the lilies and the sparrows are cared for, and so shall we. Leisure accepts this and focuses on feeding the soul of man. Leisure is the pursuit designated to prepare us for the higher purpose of eternal life in Heaven.

It is unlikely that holy days will return to the common calendar and that corporations will become more generous with their vacation policies, but these need not pose a complete barrier to the participation in life-culture. The old adage, that one makes time for what matters, holds true here. If one cares about the soul, one has to make time for its growth and cultivation; if one cares about the mind or body, one has to treat it as a priority. To lay aside the play and distractions of modernity and to take up the leisure of the past is the decision to participate in life-culture, rather than work-culture. It is to re-embrace the traditions of the past and the image of the Creator in whom we were made.