Holiday

Time from Halloween through January feels full of festivity.  Outward indications of celebration include candy, cakes, cookies, and special treats of all kinds plus special clothes, children’s’ plays, scented greenery, parades, banners, candles, enormous meals and the tiniest writing imaginable on every white inch of calendar space allowing for the myriad of activities to be recorded.  It is difficult to miss outward signs; I’m wondering about inward signs of holiday. 

The noun holiday is defined at dictionary.com.

1.  a day fixed by law or custom on which ordinary business is suspended in commemoration of some event or in honor of some person

2.  any day of exemption from work

3.  a time or period of exemption from any requirement, duty, assessment, etc.

4.  a religious feast day; holy day

5.  (chiefly British) a period of cessation from work or one of recreation; vacation.

I find that definition lacking what I am musing about.  Luckily a scroll down the page offered an entry from the 2008 Encyclopedia Britannica.

"Holiday.   (from "holy day"), originally, a day of dedication to religious observance; in modern times, a day of either religious or secular commemoration. Many holidays of the major world religions tend to occur at the approximate dates of more ancient, pagan festivals. In the case of Christianity, this is sometimes owing to the policy of the early church of scheduling Christian observances at dates when they would eclipse pagan ones - a practice that proved more efficacious than merely prohibiting the earlier celebrations. In other cases, the similarity of the date is due to the tendency to celebrate turning points of the seasons, or to a combination of the two factors." 

The roots of holiday are holy.  Holy is not limited to affiliation with religion or a religious leader.  Holy belongs to everybody.  Holy resides in everybody.  Holy days began at the beginning of human existence when people created festivals around seasons and celestial happenings.  Awesome stuff.  Over time humans put new names and meanings on ancient dates and added a few days related to human accomplishments worthy of commemoration.  Still awesome.

The cessation of work, the suspension of ordinary business is a good idea.  Exemption from ordinary opens opportunity for extraordinary.  People make a holiday special with treasured heirloom recipes, philanthropy, family gatherings, new clothes, gifts given and received.  Simultaneously, we hunger for articles offering ways to handle the holidays, throw a stress-free party, buy presents on a budget, dress for fabulous holiday style. 

I am not writing one of those articles.  I head into the holiday season knowing it will at times be stressful.   There is much to do.  What I’m wondering is how not to let stress snuff out the holy.  I don’t have defined steps but I believe we can breathe life into our own inner holy while still wiping icing off of a kid’s face with a saliva-wet finger, checking for the pop-up turkey timer and smiling continuously for photos.