HOLYDAYS AND HOLIDAYS
If religion had done nothing else for mankind than insert holydays
into the year, which came to be holidays in the best sense of the
word, the health of mankind would have a great deal for which to thank
it. Humanity is deeply indebted for the breaks in the routine of labor
which came as the result of the institution of Church holydays of
various kinds and especially for the Sundays. That every seventh day
man should be free from labor was indeed a blessing. How few there are
who realize that the Sundays, taken together, fifty-two of them, make
seven weeks and a half of vacation in the year. Seven weeks of
continuous vacation are usually too much for most people to enjoy
properly; so long an interval palls on them. Coming once a week,
however, the Sundays are probably the most wonderful aid to health and
the conservation of strength and the keeping of people in good
condition that we have.
One of the things for which we find it hardest to forgive the French
Revolution is that when men tried to rule themselves by what they
thought was pure reason, they changed the observance of Sunday every
seventh day into a day of rest every tenth day. There seems to have
been no other reason for that except that the French were introducing
the decimal system, and ten seemed to be {121} the number that
appealed to them. Perhaps there was the feeling that seven was a sort
of mystical number often mentioned in the Scriptures and deeply
connected with religion. Their thoroughgoing reaction against the
mystical made them reject it. Seven is, however, a much better number
on which to regulate the day of rest than ten, and the seventh day has
been extremely valuable for mankind.
Practically every one who has thought about the subject has recognized
this, and yet it usually needs to be called particularly to their
attention to have people generally appreciate it properly. Mr.
Gladstone once emphasized the great benefits which he himself had
derived from it and which he felt ought to be accorded to every
workingman.
"Believing in the authority of the Lord's day as a religious
institution, I must, as a matter of course, desire the recognition
of that authority by others. But, over and above this, I have
myself, in the course of a laborious life, signally experienced both
its mental and its physical benefits. I can hardly overstate its
value in this view; and for the interest of the working-men of this
country, alike in these and other yet higher respects, there is
nothing I more anxiously desire than that they should more and more
highly appreciate the Christian Day of Rest."
Macaulay, the well-known English historian and essayist, emphasized
particularly the fact that the rest of Sunday, instead of proving a
detriment to mankind, was actually an advantage. During the war the
British had to learn that lesson over again. Men and women in munition
factories were at the beginning, owing to the high wages, but with the
full approval of the government {122} authorities, encouraged to labor
in the factories on Sunday as well as on other days in the week. It
was very soon found, however, that continuous labor, instead of
enabling the operatives to keep up a greater production than before,
was soon followed by a diminution in the power of production which
sadly reduced the output. The restoration of the Sunday rest was
promptly followed by an increased output, for nature seems to need
such a rest, or after a while there comes a lassitude and relaxation
of muscular power which actually prevents men and women from
accomplishing their tasks with anything like the energy that they have
under a regime of six working days followed by a day of rest. Only the
most menial of routine labor, requiring no thought for its
accomplishment, can be kept up without definite days of rest for
relief and recuperation of forces.
Macaulay declared: "We are not poorer but richer because we have,
through many ages, rested from our labour one day in seven. That day
is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the
furrow, while the exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the
factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of the
nation as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the
machine of machines--the machine compared with which all the
contrivances of the Watts and Arkwrights are worthless--is repairing
and winding-up, so that he returns to his labours on the Monday with
clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporeal
vigour."
During the ages when organized religion had the power to regulate
human life much more than it has at the present time, there were many
more days of rest than the Sundays. It is surprising now to find how
many days {123} in the year there were on which the Church forbade
servile labor. All the Holydays of Obligation, so-called, were days of
rest. From the very earliest time in Christianity there were at least
two dozen of these in the year. The feast days of the Twelve Apostles,
for instance, were twelve holydays of obligation with no work, and
then there were of course nearly another dozen important celebrations
in honor of the Lord. Christmas, and New Year, the Annunciation on
March 25, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and usually two or three days in
Easter week, Whitmonday and, as time went on, certain feast days in
honor of the Mother of the Lord were added and then certain local
saints' days in particular regions, as for instance the patron saint
of the church of the place and often of the country. All together
there were some thirty of these Holydays of Obligation, that is one
extra day every two weeks and a little more than that was a holiday,
on which no work was done. As the vigils of all first-class feasts
were free from labor after the vesper hour, two in the afternoon, and
as no work was done on Saturday afternoons after the same hour, there
were actually well above one hundred days in the year free from labor.
One of the awful things that happened in the social order in modern
history was the obliteration of these holydays shortly after the
Reformation. We are engaged, now that we have waked up to the
necessity of working people having days of recreation, in putting the
holidays back into the year. We in this country have Lincoln's Day,
Washington's Birthday, Decoration Day, Independence Day, Labor Day,
and in most of the States Columbus Day, Election Day, and Thanksgiving
Day as well as Christmas and New Year. In England, in {124} order to
make up for some of the holidays that have been lost, or rather so
unwarrantably taken away from the working classes, they put in the
bank holidays four times in the year, having them occur on Monday
always, so that from Saturday afternoon until Tuesday morning people
are free from the obligation of laboring. We know now how wise, from a
human and merely natural as well as the divine and spiritual aspect
was the insertion of holydays in the year. We must have more holidays;
there should be at least one every month, and the old custom of having
at least one every two weeks would be much better.
There are not a few people, especially in our strenuous time, deeply
intent on human productiveness rather than on human life and
happiness, who seem inclined to think that so many holidays in the
year sadly hamper the power of humanity to get things done and,
therefore, represent a very serious waste of time. Those who think
that, however, are usually in quest of some personal advantage of some
very sordid kind and are not interested in the real achievements of
humanity. After all, human accomplishment, like personal advance,
depends not on how much we get done but how well it is done. It is not
from extremely tired, overwrought mortals, whose physical forces are
always in tension because of the almost continuous strain to which
they are subjected that we can ever expect to get any products that
are really worth while. Slave labor may be exploited thus, and it is
possible to build barracks and railroads and even pyramids in this
way, but to erect structures of any noble kind which comprise in
material form beautiful expressions of the artistic feelings of
mankind, there can be no rush of tired human beings, but time must be
taken.
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The late Mr. Standish O'Grady of Dublin, to whom probably more than to
any one else is due the modern revival in Irish literature which has
been such an incentive for better poetry throughout the
English-speaking world, once discussed this question of the
achievement of mankind when men are released from the obligation of
continuous labor and are free to think and have the opportunity to
invite their souls and be inspired to higher things. It was at a
dinner here in America, and he was remarking the fact that every one
whom he met over here in this country was busy, _busy_, BUSY! They did
not apologize for the fact, as a rule, but on the contrary seemed to
be proud of it and to think that it must be the normal state of man to
be so occupied with what he was about that he was ever deeply intent
on it. He reminded his American audience that leisure was the
foster-mother of nearly everything that mankind had ever done that was
worth while, for the worth-while things must have thought in them, and
thought requires time and leisure for its fulfillment.
Mr. O'Grady recalled the fact that twice in the world's history when
men accomplished results so great that the world will never willingly
let die the monuments then created, the most important feature of life
was its leisure. Actually one third of the time of the men of Greece
in the Periclean period, that Golden Age of achievement, was spent in
the preparation for and the celebration of religious mysteries. Their
greatest architectural monuments were their temples; their finest
sculptures were the figures of the gods and goddesses, but what is not
usually realized is that their literature was the product of the
leisure afforded for competitions in their great religious festivals,
and their painting had a similar origin. The {126} Greeks, like the
medieval Christians, had a great many feast days during the year, and
on these they held games and contests of various kinds, not only
athletic but poetic, dramatic and literary of all kinds, for Herodotus
read his great history before the assembled multitude in the
celebration of a religious festival at Athens and was awarded a prize
equivalent very probably to ten thousand dollars in our time.
What was true of the Greeks was true also, as has been said, of the
Middle Ages. The generations which made the great Gothic cathedrals
which we have come to look upon as such triumphs of construction,
which built the magnificent abbeys and town halls and hospitals of the
later Middle Ages, enduring monuments of their genius in construction,
spent one third of their time in the celebration of and the
preparation for religious festivals. Twice in the history of the
world, once in the later Middle Ages and in the older days in Greece,
dramatic literature originated anew in religious mystery and morality
plays. The men who gave us Magna Charta and all the great charters of
liberties that lie at the basis of modern rights and privileges in
practically every country in Europe had the time to think out the
solutions of their problems in the leisure afforded by the fifty-two
Sundays and thirty Holydays of Obligation which they were accustomed
to celebrate. The undying literature of the thirteenth century, the
Cid in Spain, the Arthurian legends in England, the Nibelungen in
Germany and Dante all came at a time when men set apart days for
religious meditation and a contemplation of higher things than the
sordid concerns of everyday life.
So far from one day of leisure in three interfering with human
productivity in the best sense of that word, the {127} custom actually
added to it. Men who work continuously from day to day without
intermission can make a quantity of trivial things, but they cannot
make anything that would be enduringly interesting, for they have not
the time. I have often said that I thought that the greatest
expression in American literature is those famous words of Thoreau as
to the relation of time and money. The Sage of Walden found that by
working about one half a day in the week he could support himself, and
he used the rest of the time for the study of nature around him and
for inviting his soul in the woods and along the streams. He feared
that the business of making a living might keep him from really
living. It is easy to understand that his thrifty Yankee neighbors
failed utterly to comprehend any such attitude toward what they
conceived to be a workaday world. Especially at harvest time when they
needed help it seemed a shame to see Thoreau wandering apparently
lazily and aimlessly while they were working so hard and looking for
workers whom they were willing to pay what they thought was very good
wages. They stopped Thoreau and offered him better pay than they were
usually accustomed to offer, but Thoreau replied very simply, "I have
no time to make money." There seem to be a great many people in our
day who apparently are of the opinion that the only reason for which
time is given is to make money. The Sundays and holydays, as arranged
by the religious authorities, made excellent recreation days. After
their morning spent in church, listening to a sermon by some favorite
preacher, but having the eye and the ear and even the nose appealed to
by the rest of the celebration, the people were then free for
recreation. The old Church had no Puritanic scruples about people
playing on the {128} Sabbath; there were sports of various kinds on
the green in front of the church and their parish priest might be the
referee; neighboring parishes held contests in archery or at bowls or
in what the Irish call hurling and the English call shinney. At
certain seasons the guilds offered prizes for these contests; the
young were encouraged to go into training for them for weeks
beforehand, and the prizes were conferred rather gloriously before all
those whom the young folks most loved and respected.
These Church holidays were associated with various celebrations, such
as May Day, the Feast of the Innocents or Fools; the beating of the
bounds when in procession the parishioners on the Rogation Days walked
round the various properties of the parish and asked the blessing of
heaven on the crops; the carnival time when, before abuses crept in,
the Church encouraged the celebration that would mark the beginning of
Lent and make everybody ready to bid good-by to the pleasures of life
for a while. Then the various fairs and markets were usually so timed
that they immediately followed some important festival day in the year
and afforded people an opportunity for a little vacation and an outing
in connection with the feast, while at the same time they were able to
buy what they needed.
Above all, religion insisted that some part of these days of
recreation, the holydays of the years, should be spent not merely for
one's own selfish pleasure, but in bringing pleasure to others. It was
suggested, for instance, that there could be no better occupation for
a portion of Christmas and Easter or of some Sunday afternoons than
visiting the sick or prisoners or bringing consolation to those in
need. Kings and queens washed the feet of the poor on Holy Thursday,
and there were {129} similar practices at other times in the
ecclesiastical year. The people were encouraged to bury the dead
reverently and then to keep their graves green and to visit them
occasionally on the holydays as a sign that their memory had not
faded, though also as a reminder of the fact that sometime they hoped
to be with their dear friends in another world. This may seem a rather
solemn occupation for recreation, but taken in the open air, while the
children played around the graves and the old folks sat and tallied,
it was ever so much better than that unconquerable tendency to crowd
together in hot, dusty places which afflicts people on our holidays.
The old graveyards represented the parks in even the smallest towns,
and the inhabitants had a pride in keeping them in order and found a
pleasure in visiting them occasionally. In the unfortunately crowded
conditions in which they often lived, the only lungs for some of their
villages were to be found in the churchyard. There was scarcely a town
in this country two generations ago that had anything approaching a
public park, except its cemetery.
There is a constant tendency to encroach on the Sunday rest for
commercial and industrial reasons of one kind or another, and only
religious influences have saved the Sabbath for mankind. Even as it
is, the decadence of religion in many countries has led more and more
to neglect of the Sabbath-day rest, and in certain of the European
countries particularly, Sunday, instead of being a day of rest for the
small tradesman, is sometimes his busiest day. Here in this country
religious influences were the only factors that kept the saloons more
or less closed on Sunday and kept the rest day from being an orgy of
dissipation for many people. Selfishness continues to encroach on the
precious day of rest and various {130} forms of trade try to present
some necessity for their being open on the Sabbath. This has always
been the way, and the religious sanction in the matter has been the
most precious safeguard.
At the present time, there are a good many stores open for a while or
for the whole day on Sunday for which it is hard to find any
necessity. Some of the fresh food and milk stores have a certain
justification, but why tobacco stores should be open, seeing that
their product will keep perfectly and that any man can rather easily
lay in a store to carry him over a day at least, is indeed hard to
understand. [Footnote 5]
[Footnote 5: There are probably several hundred thousand men in
this country who have to work on Sunday because the tobacco stores
are open. This is an abuse corresponding to that with regard to the
saloon, which will almost surely bring about a reaction in the
public mind against the traffic in tobacco generally.]
Another abuse of the public confidence is the opening of all drug
stores on Sunday. As a consequence hundreds of thousands of men are
deprived of this day of rest in the week. Drugs are extremely
important and should of course be available at all hours, but there is
no more reason for all the drug stores to be open every Sunday than
there is for all the drug stores to be open all night. Certain drug
stores should be open, but as St. Antonius suggested five hundred
years ago, there is no good reason why there should not be an
arrangement by which the drug stores should be open in rotation on
Sundays, so that drugs would be always available and only the
absolutely necessary articles needed for emergencies should be sold on
that day. There is no reason at all why the modern department store
annex of the large drug corporations which happens to have a small
corner of its store space set off for the filling of prescriptions
should {131} do business on Sunday than for an immense department
store to put in a prescription department and then sell goods all over
the house because they have to keep their drug department open on
Sundays. Only the religious element in life will save us from this
commercial invasion, with the harm which it does in depriving so many
people of their day of rest.
The future of the Sunday as a needed day of rest is dependent more on
religion than on any other factor. The insidious selfish quest for
money will find excuses for the violation of the day in one way or
another. The institution and maintenance down the ages of the Sabbath
day of rest is a wonderful example of what religion can accomplish for
man in the face of the corroding power of selfishness and is the best
demonstration of its living influence for the bodily as well as the
spiritual and mental health of mankind.
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