“So, what are you doing over the break?” I hear this question often. I confess, I’m frequently the one asking it. So, what’s the problem? Well, remember how the term ‘holiday’ used to mean a day of sacred observance…and now it usually just means a day off work or school? It turns out that the loss of the sacred is closely connected to our tendency to treat holidays as merely a “break” from our labor.
While breaks are a necessary and good thing, Josef Pieper observes that “[t]he ‘break’ is there for the sake of work. It is supposed to provide ‘new strength’ for ‘new work,’” and is marked by absence: a break is when you’re not working. But leisure “is a mental and spiritual attitude,” a “condition of the soul,” which is “not there for the sake of work….” It happens during rest, but as Pieper observes, “[t]he soul of leisure, it can be said, lies in ‘celebration.’”
The question, then, is this: Do we work so that we can celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas and other holidays? Or do we mark the holidays merely so that we can get back to work?
When you head home today, remember this: I do not first and foremost hope that you have a good break—though I do wish you good rest from your labor. What I really I hope, instead, is that your weeks away from school are filled with true leisure—that is, celebration.
But first, let the games begin!
