Holy Days, Holidays and Obvservances

First Delivered at the UU Church of Brevard

Sunday, October 11, 2009 

I doubt it has escaped anyone’s attention our annual holiday season is nearly upon us. A brief trip to Target with its aisles of Halloween costumes abutting shelves of Christmas lights serves as a jarring reminder like almost nothing else can. Parents are experiencing the joys of children begging to wear their Halloween costume to bed at the same time they are telling mom and dad what they want for Christmas this year. Travel plans are being made for Thanksgiving, budgets are being scrutinized for gift giving and college football teams are being evaluated for Bowl bids. Yep, ‘tis the season indeed. 

So I thought it might be the perfect time to take a look at what holidays are all about. Most of us can spot the similarity between the words holy day and the word holiday. And in fact we do get the word holiday from the Old English haligdæg, from halig "holy" + dæg "day;" in about the fourteenth century. And it means both “religious festival” and “day of recreation” with both the pronunciation and the meaning diverging in the sixteenth-century. In the scheme of things, it didn’t take all that long for a religious observance to become a day of recreation.  

Many of us may be reminded of the Ten Commandments when we hear the phrase, “holy day.” The third or fourth commandment depending upon your religion, instructs us to remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Exodus 20: 9-11 says, “For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.” Latin, Greek and Hebrew all have similar words that mean “day of rest.” And the modern Italian and Spanish words for Saturday, sabbato and sabado respectively reflect this origin. 

A few months ago I touched on the subject of rest as a spiritual endeavor in my sermon entitled, “Give Me a Break.” We do need to make time to slow down, pray, meditate…or we risk the dangers of unsustainability. I believe our ancestors probably had an intuitive awareness that all work and no play (or rest!) make Jack, if not a dull boy, definitely not a fully aware and alive one.  

I don’t want to dig too deep into the etymology of the word Sabbath or get bogged down in debates about what should and should not be considered work on a divinely ordained day of rest. I’ll simply offer my opinion that I do believe regular designated times for rest and contemplation provide substantial benefits to our mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. 

The medieval church set aside Sundays and a number of saint’s feast days as holy days. The church asserted its authority by mandating what activities could and could not be engaged in on these days. Dietary restrictions and prohibitions against sexual activity came first, followed by prohibitions against fighting, looting and warfare.  The church overreached a bit by declaring about half of the calendar as holy days. My personal concern with having a high proportion of days set aside as holy days is that familiarity breeds, if not contempt, than certainly dispassion and ultimately disinterest.  

The purpose of holy days is to demarcate a difference between the sacred and the mundane. Some religions place an emphasis on particular locations in space (sacred mountains and holy rivers), others place an emphasis on moments in time (the Sabbath and holy days).  Obviously there is overlap. For example, the time during which a ritual takes place is deemed sacred, as is the place in which the ritual is occurring. So it really is a matter of emphasis and orientation. 

I’m going to use a Catholic wedding ceremony as an example, simply because that was my personal experience. The church had rules about which days were acceptable and they insisted I be married within the four walls of a Catholic church or chapel. So the concepts of both sacred space and sacred time were involved. However, if the church I attended had to be closed for renovation, a priest could have consecrated a new building on the opposite corner and that would then become transformed into sacred space. By contrast, a Hindu living in New York City, who visits the Temple every Friday because that is Lakshmi’s day of honor (sacred time) is not going to view the East River as a suitable alternative to having his ashes scattered in the Ganges (sacred space). 

A few years ago, in a sermon on Native American spirituality, I pointed out that in these traditions, although everything possesses a spirit, certain landscapes or geological formations embody a special quality of sacredness. This is not accomplished by consecrating a temple or a cathedral, it is an element of the land itself. These places are precious to the tribe and are where people go to fast, pray or seek vision. European thought enables us to raze a church and build it up again down the block. We exhume bodies and transfer them to another cemetery. This is utterly alien to Native American spirituality. The place itself is what contains the sacred element. 

Cultures with a world view that places humans either outside of nature or in a position of authority over nature, have a linear conception of time and focus on artifacts are far more likely to place an emphasis on sacred time. 

Cultures with a world view that places human inside of nature, have a cyclical conception of time and focus on landforms are far more likely to place an emphasis on sacred space. 

I have to admit I was more than a bit humbled when I complained about a decided lack of fall following the autumnal equinox and a more observant fellow at the UU Congregation in Cocoa listed a slew of floral and faunal changes he had observed that indicated, yes indeed, autumn is here in Central Florida. All I had noticed was the heat and humidity seemed even worse that weekend than they had a month ago. Not surprisingly, his spirituality is far more firmly rooted in nature than is mine. I am indebted to him for a spiritual wake up call. I did indeed take the time to pause throughout the following week and observe the seasonal changes. I couldn’t possibly express the profound experiences that resulted.

I suppose this sermon could be considered the second of a two-part series. Last month I addressed the spiritual practice of worship and defined it as the act of reminding myself of values the world would otherwise make me forget.  

I hope it is somewhat obvious that holy days and holidays provide us, or hopefully provide us, with the time in which to engage in this spiritual practice.  Last month I said, “Keeping a soul healthy and alive requires work and attention. It does not just happen. Like other aspects of ourselves, if we want to be able to do something, we have to practice. We might have the potential to do something, but we have to practice.” What does practice require? The time and the place in which to do it. By demarcating the sacred and the mundane—whether our own personal emphasis is on time or space, or an attempt to balance the two—we dedicate ourselves to the task of attempting to bring the sacred into the everyday. 

Not an easy task, and not necessarily a possible one. I am reminded of a sports cliché in which a player or coach says something along the lines of, “We’re going to have to play the entire time like it’s the last two minutes of the game.” Good luck with that. There is just something inherently different about the first two minutes of a game and the last two minutes. On the other hand, it is entirely possible to step up your play even if you can’t quite bring it to the level of those moments just before the closing whistle.  

This is what both worship and holidays are intended to help us do. They are punctuated moments in time that reorient us and inspire us to bring it up a level. They remind us of what we are capable, and once reminded, challenge us to bring that new found ethical orientation and spiritual maturity into our daily lives. 

Unfortunately, sometimes we have to be reminded about the reminders.  

I’m going to steer us into a bit of an aside for a moment, and head off into the realm of observances. I have a friend who tried to honor observances for an entire year. She kept track of what the calendar days had been designated and tried to do something for that day. For example in this past week: 

·        Monday was Improve Your Home Office Day

·        Tuesday was National-German American Day

·        Wednesday was Balloons Around the World Day

·        Thursday was National Depression Screening Day

·        Friday was Leif Erikson Day

·        Yesterday was National Cake Decorating Day

·        And today is National Coming Out Day

Some days have more than others and we do it for months too. Some of the more familiar are February being Black History Month and October is both Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month. 

Now some of us may roll our eyes at a few of the daily observances, What is the purpose of a “National Cake Decorating Day?” Especially since most of us probably weren’t even aware of it at the time. And some days have far more than others. Tomorrow? Tomorrow is Columbus Day, Freethought Day, International Moment of Frustration Scream Day (I might have to observe that one!), National Kick Butt Day, National Salesperson Day (I hope those aren’t considered the same thing) and World Egg Day. 

Needless to say, my friend was mentally exhausted by the end of the year, but she sure had experienced an interesting range of activities and encountered a lot of information lost on the rest of us. Luckily for us, we’re really not expected to do what she did. But her endeavor did make me stop and consider why we have these observances. Obviously cake decorating is important to enough people that it warranted a national day in its honor, though I do have to wonder about the Kick Butt Day lobby. They are reminders in a number of ways. 

They remind us of professions, activities, historical achievements and all around silliness that someone doesn’t want forgotten. So instead of asking why, we should perhaps ask, why not? The only drawbacks I can see are the same problems with the medieval church designating about half the year as a holy day. 1. Disinterest. If every day is something we don’t really pay much attention, do we? 2. Resentment. If the obligations of holy days and holidays begin to feel oppressive we dread rather than joyfully anticipate and grudgingly participate if we participate at all. We shouldn’t forget another purpose of holy days and holidays. Yes, they provide for a break from the daily grind and an opportunity for spiritual reorientation, but they’re also meant to be fun. That’s why so many holidays, religious and secular, involve celebrations and festivities. 

But unlike the national day of…whatever, the biggies we celebrate aren’t every day, are they? Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years come but one day a year. And over time their meaning and impact evolve, don’t they? While pretty close, the popular celebrations of Halloween today aren’t exactly the same as when I was a kid just a few decades ago. Contemporary Christmas is vastly different from the celebrations of the 19^th century which were different from the holiday in the 17^th century and again, remarkably different from the holiday in the 15^th century. Christmas has changed dramatically and not because of the so-called “War on Christmas” either. Holy Days and Holidays are subject to their social and cultural environment. There is no getting around that. I’ll go ahead and get my anti-materialism plug in right now and say that I hope we all can make a concerted effort to gain more in spiritual rewards this holiday season than credit card debt. 

All this thought on holiday has really brought me to a notion I have struggled with for a number of years now. Many of you probably know I am a bit of a Christmas nut. If you have been to our annual holiday party—Saturday, December 13^th this year by the way, more in the November Gallimaufry on that—you have seen a house obscenely over-decorated for the holidays. The irony and a sad one is that Christmas itself doesn’t really do much for me anymore—especially now that all three of my children have grown beyond the Santa myth. 

My family celebrated an adapted version of Chanukah for a few years, until we realized any sort of spiritual message was being lost on the children and they just wanted the nightly token gifts and to fight over who lit the candles. Our family has Easter traditions, but these are primarily the ones that most people consider secular rather than religious or spiritual these days. Plastic eggs with jellybeans, chocolate bunnies with the ears the first to go, a trip to the zoo if possible (that’s a holdover from my childhood Easter traditions). It’s all well and good to explain the symbolism to children, it’s another matter to reorient your adult soul in the midst of egg hunts and pleas for one more piece of chocolate before breakfast. 

Even with the knowledge that all holidays change throughout the centuries, have been shared, adapted or co-opted by a variety of religious, so therefore it should make no difference if I do a little personal adaptation of my own, I still cannot shake the pervasive feeling that our faith tradition offers us no real holiday of our own. Mind you, I realize this is irrational since our Living Tradition draws from many sources and our denomination has historical roots in the Christian faith.  

But sometimes I feel like I’m really just going through the motions and paying lip service to a calendar of holy days that really don’t operate that way for me. I suppose it is a personal crisis of faith that some of you may share, but may leave many of you wondering why this should even be an issue for me.

It believe it may be an issue because I see enormous value in the transformative potential of a holiday that carries with it deep personal meaning, family traditions and cultural acceptance. I have introduced my family to the holiday of HumanLight that is celebrated by a handful of humanists on December 23. Perhaps this will catch on, with both my family and in our society. I don’t know, only time will tell. But my cultural and family environment currently renders this one a bit lost in the midst of the other established traditions. Maybe my family will appreciate it more when Legos and Action Figures aren’t on the wish lists any more. We shall see. But HumanLight is still not uniquely Unitarian Universalist. 

Jokes can sometimes give insight into identity. You do know what a Unitarian Universalist Holy Day of Obligation is, don’t you? When it’s your Sunday to make the coffee. That speaks to a number of problems with UUs and sacred time. 

I actually do occasionally spend time wondering what a UU holiday would look like. What would be the primary symbols, the foods deemed absolutely necessary for the feast (would there be a feast?), what colors adorn the sanctuary and our homes, and when does it fall on the calendar? What traditions in terms of both ritual and celebration are involved in this UU holiday. Which of these traditions roots us in the past and which are new, unique to UUs and point us towards the future. What is the message that draws us together to celebrate and reflect upon? To what values are we compelled to reorient ourselves by means of a uniquely UU holiday? 

No, I’m not going to tackle such a project at this time. Nor am I going to ask our congregation to invent a UU holiday. But I do invite you to take a closer look at how holy days and holidays operate in your life.

·       Are they times of rote obligation or occasions for serious reflection?

·       Are they a loving balance of fun and spirituality or too much of one over the other.

·       Do you try to celebrate so many different holidays they have all lost any deeply held personal meaning?

·       Have you given up on holidays all together as something crass and commercial so therefore unworthy of any consideration?

Whatever the case may be, I encourage you to wrestle with this topic as a spiritual exercise. Holy days and holidays do serve an important purpose in our religious lives. What place should they have in yours? 

Peace be with you.

Ann Fuller, October 2009

 

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