In medieval England, just prior to the Reformation, there were between 40 and 50 days of the calendar (apart from Sundays) that were feasts of the Church on which little to no work was done. Historian, Eamon Duffy, describes this:
As important as fast days were feast days, in particular the festa ferianda, on which total or partial abstention from servile work was required and the laity were expected to observe the Sunday pattern of attendance at matins, Mass, and evensong, fasting on the preceding eve. There were between forty and fifty such days, with variations in the precise list from region to region. (The Stripping of the Altars, p. 130).
By the end of the Reformation period, such days had largely disappeared, with Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost (Whitsunday), alone remaining – with only Christmas being a possible weekday celebration. Under the Puritans, Christmas itself was abolished.
It is possible to think about this shift in Christian thought in economic terms. Fifty days in the year on which work is interrupted can have an enormous impact on productivity and efficiency. It has long been commonplace to compare the industrious example of early Protestantism to the more “lazy” example of Catholics. Max Weber coined the phrase, “Protestant Work Ethic,” together with theories to explain the difference. The shift itself can be seen in the very use of economics to measure what is good and salutary in a society. Weber is also among the first to describe what he called the “disenchantment” of the modern world. Strictly speaking, the modern world has not been disenchanted. Rather, it is now enchanted with money and the “invisible hand” of the market.
We are the inheritors of this cultural pattern. Though Orthodox and Catholic festal calendars continue the ancient pattern of feast days, priests often serve liturgies for nearly empty Churches. There are accomodations that seek to moderate the modern effect: Catholic practice and some Orthodox jurisdictions allow for a Liturgy on the evening before a feast so that working families can still attend. What is lost, however, is the larger meaning of the ancient feasts. Work defines the culture and we feast within the smallest of margins.
It is worth thinking about all of this as we approach our culture’s largest remaining feast: Christmas. Of course, the original and proper meaning of the feast is often swallowed by the pseudo-feast marketed by the culture itself. That pseudo-feast can be seen in our seasonal movies in which romance, children’s happiness, and a bit of playful magic are celebrated without reference to the birth of Christ. In some Christian Churches, Christmas itself is understood to be a “family festival” such that Church services are cancelled should December 25 fall on a Sunday.
What constitutes a feast?
Perhaps the most interesting work on this topic is the small book, In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, by the Catholic philosopher, Josef Pieper (1963). Pieper offers this observation:
…the Biblical sentence remains inviolate: that the festival is a day “the Lord has made” (Ps. 117: 24). It remains true because while man can make the celebration, he cannot make what is to be celebrated, cannot make the festive occasion and the cause for celebrating. The happiness of being created, the existential goodness of things, the participation in the life of God, the overcoming of death – all these occasions of the great traditional festivals are pure gift. But because no one can confer a gift on himself, something that is entirely a human institution cannot be a real festival.
The culture has borrowed the outward forms of the feast: a bit of leisure, the exchange of gifts, a bit of family time, as well as sentimental songs and traditional foods (which, strangely, in Japan, is dinner from KFC). There is, however, an emptiness in the trimmings when the true Gift of the feast is missing. It is a gift whose absence makes modern life largely immune to true feasting.
The reality of feasting rests on a paradox. Those who abolished the Medieval festivals argued that “all days are holy.” They exalted the mundane by declaring it to be holy (“work is holy”). The paradox, however, is that if “all days are holy” we somehow forget that any day is holy. The mundane swallows the significance of the “holy” until it becomes a word without meaning. The same paradox can be observed elsewhere. Protestants emphasized the “priesthood of all believers” to such an extent that they forgot what “priesthood” means. If everyone is a priest, then no one is a priest.
The meaning comes from the particularity of things – not from the general. If I say to an Orthodox believer that he has a “priestly function,” his mind goes first to the function made manifest through the priest in his parish. Indeed, if we speak of Christ as “our Great High Priest,” there remains a need to see a particular priest in action to rightly understand what is being said. By the same token, we cannot define a “feast” simply with the absence of work. A “day off” is not the “day of.” Not working is not the meaning of anything.
The “week” is the earliest story in Genesis. It is given to us as seven “days.” The last day of the week, the seventh (“Sabbath” in Hebrew), is marked as “holy,” in that it is set aside as a day given to God. We do no work to honor the reality that God “rested” on that day. In Christian interpretation, God “rested” in the Tomb on Holy Saturday – His “rest in death” trampling down death and setting all creation free. That same triumph is fulfilled in the “Eighth Day” (Sunday) as the resurrection of Christ reveals the meaning that had been “hidden from all the ages.” Sunday becomes the weekly Christian feast.
We are several centuries removed from the destruction of the Medieval world. In our modern culture, work (making money) has become the defining purpose of life. Leisure is thus a “day off,” a day of needed rest so that we can go back to work. The work defines even our rest.
The truth, however, is the reverse. It is the feasting that gives meaning to all things. It is God’s holy day that gives every day its meaning. It is our resting in God that gives any moment of work its truth and its value. Fr. Alexander Schmemann said that we are best defined as homo eucharisticus, “man, the giver of thanks.” We were created for communion with God. All that we have is a gift, and we live in the wonder of that gift as we return thanks to God and share His bounty with others.
Each day is Christmas. Each day is Pascha. Every moment is a gift given for communion with God. He has given us our feast days that we might return to our senses and transform the whole of our life in gifted remembrance.
Glory to His name!
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