Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Good Friday Weekend
When I was a youngster, we'd always get a nice vacation come Eastertide. "Easter vacation," we called it. We'd get a week off from our studies, either the week before Easter or the week after Easter. Then -- for reasons of political correctness, I suppose -- they changed it to "spring break."
At first, the change was merely terminological: they continued to schedule spring break during the week immediately before or after Easter. By the time I got to college, though, spring break didn't necessarily coincide with Easter time. In fact, it usually didn't. It was truly no longer an Easter vacation.
I never cared what they called it, though, so long as I got my week off around early April. For me, the name of the holiday was totally irrelevant.
Then I finished my schooling, and suddenly I no longer got shit with respect to any time off in April. The nomenclatural issue had become irrelevant in a whole new way.
Without this time off, I became bitter (as those deprived of leisure are wont to do) and disgruntled, and for decades I considered strategies for building some sort of a socio-political movement that would bring a week-long holiday to all working people, laborers and professionals alike, in late March or early April. Why should the students have all the fun?
Eventually I realized that my dream of a spring break for adults was never going to be a reality. There was simply too much work to be done. Sure, it was all well and good for young people to take a week off in order to go drink beer and do drugs and hump each other till chafed...let's face it, they probably wouldn't have been attending that many classes that week anyway. But if the nation's mature, employed citizens were to stop reporting for duty for an entire week, well, then that'd be an entirely different story. Civilization would grind to a fucking standstill.
Somebody has to bring the butter to market, you see. Someone has to chop up all the cows, and somebody else has to squeeze all the oranges to make juice. And it's not like hot water and electricity and the Internet are going to just magically pump themselves to us. No, people need to show up each morning around 9am; otherwise, none of this shit gets done.
My vision of a universal, week-long spring break was a chimera, and to continue pursuing it would have been madness. I let it go.
Still, April's the perfect time of year for a new three-day weekend because April is, quite arguably, the bleakest of months. First of all, it's a holiday wasteland. You got your Cesar Chavez Day (if you were lucky) in March and then there's Memorial Day in late May, but in April there's nothing. The glow of Yule has long since faded, and the warmth of summer is still but an inchoate promise. Plus it's tax season, and so April is a sad, dark time that groans in its misery and begs for relief. Of course, I now understand that it isn't feasible to give everyone an entire week off, but I'll bet that society could afford one more three-day weekend.
Unfortunately, since Easter Sunday always falls on a Sunday (duh) it has no potential as an anchor for a new three-day weekend. Who needs a day off to celebrate a day off? That's why we who would effect change should all stop emphasizing Easter so much and why we should start taking Good Friday a lot more seriously. Besides, Good Friday's where all the action is anyway. After all, it was on Friday that Christ took the hit for us (praise Him!). It was Good Friday when His glorious sacrifice absolved us of our sins. It was Good Friday when His sufferings set humanity loose from the chains of damnation. After Friday, whatever happened to Jesus was pretty much Jesus' problem. I mean, I guess everything worked out okay for Him in the end, which is great, but whatever....
At first, the change was merely terminological: they continued to schedule spring break during the week immediately before or after Easter. By the time I got to college, though, spring break didn't necessarily coincide with Easter time. In fact, it usually didn't. It was truly no longer an Easter vacation.
I never cared what they called it, though, so long as I got my week off around early April. For me, the name of the holiday was totally irrelevant.
Then I finished my schooling, and suddenly I no longer got shit with respect to any time off in April. The nomenclatural issue had become irrelevant in a whole new way.
Without this time off, I became bitter (as those deprived of leisure are wont to do) and disgruntled, and for decades I considered strategies for building some sort of a socio-political movement that would bring a week-long holiday to all working people, laborers and professionals alike, in late March or early April. Why should the students have all the fun?
Eventually I realized that my dream of a spring break for adults was never going to be a reality. There was simply too much work to be done. Sure, it was all well and good for young people to take a week off in order to go drink beer and do drugs and hump each other till chafed...let's face it, they probably wouldn't have been attending that many classes that week anyway. But if the nation's mature, employed citizens were to stop reporting for duty for an entire week, well, then that'd be an entirely different story. Civilization would grind to a fucking standstill.
Somebody has to bring the butter to market, you see. Someone has to chop up all the cows, and somebody else has to squeeze all the oranges to make juice. And it's not like hot water and electricity and the Internet are going to just magically pump themselves to us. No, people need to show up each morning around 9am; otherwise, none of this shit gets done.
My vision of a universal, week-long spring break was a chimera, and to continue pursuing it would have been madness. I let it go.
Still, April's the perfect time of year for a new three-day weekend because April is, quite arguably, the bleakest of months. First of all, it's a holiday wasteland. You got your Cesar Chavez Day (if you were lucky) in March and then there's Memorial Day in late May, but in April there's nothing. The glow of Yule has long since faded, and the warmth of summer is still but an inchoate promise. Plus it's tax season, and so April is a sad, dark time that groans in its misery and begs for relief. Of course, I now understand that it isn't feasible to give everyone an entire week off, but I'll bet that society could afford one more three-day weekend.
Unfortunately, since Easter Sunday always falls on a Sunday (duh) it has no potential as an anchor for a new three-day weekend. Who needs a day off to celebrate a day off? That's why we who would effect change should all stop emphasizing Easter so much and why we should start taking Good Friday a lot more seriously. Besides, Good Friday's where all the action is anyway. After all, it was on Friday that Christ took the hit for us (praise Him!). It was Good Friday when His glorious sacrifice absolved us of our sins. It was Good Friday when His sufferings set humanity loose from the chains of damnation. After Friday, whatever happened to Jesus was pretty much Jesus' problem. I mean, I guess everything worked out okay for Him in the end, which is great, but whatever....
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