Taking vacations

[dismalist]

I am happy new workplace does this because it does force you to take vacation instead of work/work/work all the time--which is probably better for productivity in the long run?!

It's a life-cycle thing. In my yute I worked in a place that forced one to have ca. four weeks of vacation. I would have gladly traded the time for money. Was not allowed to. Later, circumstances changed -- found a wife-to-be -- and would have gladly traded money for more time off! Was not allowed to.

Much later I had academic jobs and these are flexible enough that one can decide the length of one's own vacation.

The whole idea of paid vacation is self-contradictory. The only person paying for that vacation is the employee him or herself. Therefore, some kind of freely arrived at choice between employer and employee is right, and this would vary over time. If there is a [sometimes justified] personal fear of working oneself to death, one can commit to vacation by booking cruises years ahead. :-)

In the middle ages, adding up Sundays and all holidays amounted to one third of the year. One sat around in church most of that time. This was efficient because it effectively prevented people from working themselves to death in a tightly calorie constrained environment.

[mamselle]

In the middle ages, adding up Sundays and all holidays amounted to one third of the year. One sat around in church most of that time. This was efficient because it effectively prevented people from working themselves to death in a tightly calorie constrained environment.

Ummm...no.

The secular canons or collegial monastics who staffed the churches sat in them and sang a lot the time, yes.

But the regular folks only appeared on some Sundays and feast days.

The "days off" were intended to prevent fighting (one was not supposed to draw swords on a saint's feast day) but most people worked at farming or other pursuits on most of those days. They might, if they lived near a cathedral or church with a choir staff, make it to one of the offices (6 AM, 9 AM, noon, or 3 PM; vespers, or compline--the 'regular folk' didn't get up to do midnight Matins or early-AM Lauds), or a morning Mass, maybe.

They might also--if there were many near the town--line the roads and make donations in the processional troncs that accompanied the saint's-relic-of-the-day.

But they mostly worked all day, for as much as the daylight would allow.

M.   

[dismalist]

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/learning/medievalwomen/theme12/holydays.aspx

Apparently, people were dragged into an ecclesiastical court if they didn't show up for church on Sundays and holidays.

Also, 

We may consider that the people living in the Middle Ages were free of labour on about 80 to100  days  a  year. ... Work  was  forbidden  on  these  days,  including  not  only  the  work  of  the  peasants  and craftsmen, but also even female textile work at home

from here https://www.sbg.ac.at/ges/people/rohr/nsk11.pdf, p. 6.

Nothing like a feast to replace a paid vacation!

[mamselle]

The 17th c. in England is not medieval, and that would have been either an Anglican or a Dissenting confession, not a Catholic one.

Anglican is most likely, since the town's government would report to the crown, which was also then the head of the church.

Earlier Catholic laws were not local, and the RC church was no longer legitimately in charge in England after the 1530s (grace a Henry VIII), so if it's not Anglican, it might be a dissenting town (unlikely but not impossible at that point).

And the anti-work laws may have been on the books, but the economy would have collapsed if they'd really been enforced.

I'd have expected that bunch of scholars to know better.

And I worked for this bunch:

   www.ldausa.org

which doesn't quite go for the "Keep Sunday Special" laws anymore, per se, although it encourages voluntary Sabbath observance, so I'm not unfamiliar with the issues....

M.

[dismalist]

No, the people would have collapsed if they hadn't taken time off for feasts.

[mamselle]

The Cecil B. DeMille scenes of milling crowds swinging tankards of ale and gnawing on Asterix-sized joints of mutton don't depict what happened then at "feasts" for the common folk.

People in large castles and manor houses might have very occasionally celebrated like that, and the people associated with those houses might have had some time off, but farms require workers 24/7, animals require oversight at the same level, and within the towns, some upper-level merchants may have had it rather well, but a lot of people did in fact collapse very early in life.

The town I work on had 42 processions a year from the cathedral to various nearby local sites, but the small number of people living in the town or just outside it suggest that if they drew a crowd of 100 or so on a good day they were doing well....along the whole parade route.

There were other people living in the town, but many were in convents or monasteries--this archdiocesan town had 10 large emplantations within the town walls or just outside them. The monastics and nuns were mostly cloistered agricultural houses, with large farms and vinyards to tend to; the friars (Dominican and Franciscan) might wander about preaching, but they also had jobs to do.   

Edmund Halley's later actuarial survey of the town of Breslau (the first ever done) showed that nearly half of all children died before the age of 12; 40% of women died in childbed, and a high number of young men fell off roofs, horses, and dovecote rafters by the age of 40.

In the colonies, it was slightly better; only 40% of all children (rather than 1/2) died by age 12, the same childbirth stats held, and about the same stats for men held, but a few older people did make it to 60, 70. 80, or 90--if they made it past all those other marker points. (I'd have to pull my book files to find the exact numbers if you want them).

So, the "life was brutish, short," and whatever else is the operant description here.

Socialized romanticism about the Western medieval era has a lot to answer for.

William Chester Jordan's work on the Gothic era is worth reading.

M.

[dismalist]

Feast, here, operatively means not working, not eating. Gotta watch one's definitions and what reality they describe.

[dismalist]

This thread really got sidetracked. Resuming our regularly scheduled programming

A dream of mine has long been this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSMwp4iRl2s&list=RDCMUC_-x5Cm8qwyGUAYVSfieEuw&index=2, more about cooking, and the larger location https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ-BZjopP4I&list=RDCMUC_-x5Cm8qwyGUAYVSfieEuw&index=12, in the Italian Alps.

Alas, dreams must often remain dreams.

[mamselle]

Feast, here, operatively means not working, not eating. Gotta watch one's definitions and what reality they describe.

Fete (the saint's day celebrations you refer to as a 'vacation') still =/= feast, which does imply food, large groups of people taking time off, etc.

Sorry for the derailment.

Back to our regularly-scheduled discussion of vacations in the present time...which are, in fact, a first-world problem all their own.

M.

[apl68]

Feast, here, operatively means not working, not eating. Gotta watch one's definitions and what reality they describe.

Fete (the saint's day celebrations you refer to as a 'vacation') still =/= feast, which does imply food, large groups of people taking time off, etc.

Sorry for the derailment.

Back to our regularly-scheduled discussion of vacations in the present time...which are, in fact, a first-world problem all their own.

M.

To add to what mamselle pointed out above, different groups in a community celebrated different saints' feasts.  Only a very few occasions each year involved large segments of the whole community.  Celebrations might involve only a particular household, or a particular guild or fraternal society.

Even communities which were very serious about Sabbath observance understood the reality that there were things such as feeding livestock that one had to do even on the Sabbath.  The practice of churches normally having Sunday services in late morning originated in a need to allow time to get the most essential chores out of the way and then walk to church, not a desire to sleep in.