Advent 09- Holidays

I don't think anyone's going to argue with me when I say that holidays are a Good Thing.  By holidays, I mean not just going away but any time off work.  It's only relatively recently (nineteenth century) that the idea of paid holidays and even weekends became part of working culture, and it's one development I'm certainly glad of!
  
Before industrialisation, most people worked on the land, and times of busyness and rest would follow the agricultural year- busy times in spring ploughing and planting and late summer harvesting, and slacker times in winter as it was too cold to work as much outside.  Once the busiest time of year- harvest- was over, there would be time to celebrate and relax for a while.  Midwinter (around the time we now celebrate Christmas) was also a festival in many early European- and probably other- cultures.

The other reasons people took time off work were for religious festivals.  The word 'holiday' comes, I believe, from 'holy day.'  In the middle ages in Europe there were many saints' days which people were required to keep either as full or part holidays, as well as Sundays, when of course people were not allowed to work.

I've never fully understood why certain Puritan groups in the seventeenth century were determined to ban Christmas.  They saw it as too close to the saints' days which they were determined to abolish as a relic of 'popery.'  But Sundays were to be kept with the strictest laws governing what you could and couldn't do, and harsh punishments if you disobeyed.

But it was in the nineteenth century when we first got the rhythm of weekdays and weekends which we know today.  Growing industrialism brought many people to towns and cities from the country, and people began to be appalled at the state, both physical and mental, in which the poor were forced to live, herded together, working from a very young age in noisy, factories or dirty mines.  Legislation began to be passed forcing employers to improve working conditions and give their employees days off- Bank holidays, and later paid holidays.  Modern transport, like the railways, and cheap holiday camps like Butlins were there to cater for the thousands of people who now had time and money for a holiday.  And thus the leisure industry was born.

Compared to our nineteenth-century ancestors we're very lucky today in our working conditions and holidays.  I'm glad I live now, not then, for all the problems in my life and the world.  Holidays are certainly a Good Thing.