history
Happy Holidays
By Mik
e Geo r ge
Mike George is our regular contributor on wildlife and the countryside in France. He is a geologist and naturalist, living in the Jurassic area of the Charente
WE ALL VALUE OUR HOLIDAYS, BUT WHEN DID THEY START? WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE? WHAT DETERMINES THE DATE?
M
y guess is that it all started with the Winter Solstice. You, as an exhunter-gatherer, have recently discovered agriculture, and have noticed that this relies on the sun. You have also noticed that the sun has a peculiar habit of descending towards the horizon as the days go by, and then going back up again, thereby having a serious effect upon the climate, the length of the day and your ability to feed yourself and your family. You have this lurking fear that the sun may forget to go back up again. A festival to remind him to do so is a good plan. Now you have the Winter Solstice festival. It happens when the weather is not suitable for planting and growing and harvesting, so there is nothing much for you to do except party. Of course, this wasn’t a holiday (you can bet there wasn’t much holy about it!) but it was a break from normal life and a chance to let your hair down. As the centuries passed, things got a bit more organised. The life of man was one of toil and hardship, and the more times this could be relieved, the better. The Sabbath, the one day in seven when man could rest, was soon established. Attempts to change that have always resulted in disaster. It seems to fit with Man’s circadian rhythms. From it springs the seven-day week. The Church gets involved The Church, when it finally gained a foothold in Society, brought wonderful new opportunities for rest. Christmas replaced the Winter Solstice Festival, Easter came along in spring to swallow up any unseemly welcoming of the season of fertility, and Saints’ Days gave numerous excuses for a day of contemplation instead of toil. We also got the word “holiday”, of course! Of all the bank holidays in England only Good Friday and Christmas Day are enshrined in Common Law, having been
10 etcetera
celebrated since “Time Immemorial" (for reference, that in law means, "since before Richard 1st came to the throne in 1189”). All other holidays are either announced by Royal Decree annually, or fixed by statute.
third) Sunday in April, but it was left to the church to make the final arrangements, and nothing happened. The Act is still on the statute books, and I understand that there are moves afoot in the major Churches to resurrect the idea (no pun intended).
Thus, two festivals were set – or were they? Christmas happened on 25th December (or was it 12 January? That As far as the other potential holidays went, gave rise to some fierce arguments in the to a great extent you could decide for 17th century.) and Easter happened on the yourself when to have a festival. Choose a first Sunday after the first full moon after saint to venerate, or to be the patron of the spring equinox. This itself sounds your Church, and there you were. fairly complicated and is the result of the The Needs of Industry only certain thing we know about the timing of the crucifixion of Jesus, namely This didn’t much matter when everything that it all happened around the Feast of was decentralised and holidays were not Passover, which, since the Jews used a so disruptive of the workforce. However, lunar calendar, was fixed by lunar when the Industrial Revolution came calculation. along, and the various Indeed, there sections of industry When the Industrial Revolution became interdependent, were problems even with that. came along, and the various trouble loomed. You may have sections of industry became At the beginning of the 19th noticed that this interdependent, trouble loomed century, the Bank of England year, the Jewish (since we are talking about Passover bank holidays) recognised happened a about 40 saints’ days as holidays during week before Easter. That was because the the year. Again, these may for the most full moon actually fell on the Sunday part have been celebrated locally, not which coincided with the equinox, and the nationally. In 1834 this was slashed to 4, two religions had slightly different criteria namely May Day, All Saints’ Day, Good for fixing the day of the festival. Friday and Christmas Day. This moveability of Easter has always been This didn’t last long. Although it is a problem, in that Easter could happen difficult to determine how widespread any time within a five-week period, which such a curtailment must have been, the made it difficult to decide when the Bank of England was back up to between 6 holiday industry should kick into action. and 18 holidays by 1845. Also, different Christian sects were prone to using slightly different criteria, and But the general populace was getting a raw again Easter could be celebrated on two deal. Some factories, where annual dates in the same year, even by Christians. maintenance had to be done, would This is what the Synod of Whitby in 664 declare a “Wakes Week" when the factory was largely about. would be shut down, the maintenance It is a little-known fact that the UK Parliament passed an act, the Easter Act 1928, which would allow the date of Easter Day to be set as the second (or possible
men would go in and the workers could join an excursion or make their own arrangements. No picking the date for your holiday!
