Putting My Vacation Time Where My Mouth Is
On a number of occasions both here and in private conversations, I have complained about our society not being ordered in a such a way that major feast days are also public holidays (except for Christmas). And on this Feast of Christ the King our pastor gave an excellent homily about putting Christ at the center of all things, and the bad things that happen to society when our Lord is officially banished from the public sphere. We all know the condition of society at large today, but our homes are also little societies.
There have been a number of times when I was trying to hype up this or that feast day to my children, but I had to go work, and there wasn’t time to do anything special, so it passed without much notice. So I have decided to implement a plan I have been considering for a while now. I am going to allocate as much of my vacation time as I can to take time off for major feast days. Ideally I would take off the whole octave of Christmas (which I do), Easter and Pentecost, and also Holy Week, all first class feast days, and a few other days that have become special for my family (e.g. Nativity of John the Baptist, St. Nicholas’ day). But obviously I don’t have that kind of vacation time. Also, all my family lives pretty far away and I need vacation to visit them. So keeping in mind the reality of our present situation here is my tentative plan:
I always take off a couple weeks at Christmas time. So I will be off Christmas Eve through Epiphany.
Good Friday through Easter Tuesday (and more if possible)
Ascension Thursday
Pentecost Monday and Tuesday
Nativity of John the Baptist
All Saints
Other feasts I may try to squeeze in are Candlemas, St. Joseph, Assumption, All Souls, Martinmas, St. Nicholas, St. Lucy. (Some of these are already on off days this year).
At some point I will try to do a post on how it goes.
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October 28th, 2009 @ 8:49 am
I enjoy your blog very much and appreciate the things you say on the important feasts as we go through the liturgical year. I especially liked what you said about Fall not starting with football - and we get the sense that it should! - but it feels much more natural now to feel the change in seasons with Michaelmas, as you said.
And this Oct. 26 posting is quite a powerful testimony to one’s faith, to arrange your times off from secular work to honor the Church’s traditional way of arranging time.
I have a feeling that your writings might be part of the conditions that could lead to the restoration of the Church.
I know blog-writing gets to be another little burden to our schedules sometimes, but if you do continue to write, I’d like to share this with all the people in the Bible study classes that I have. For them, a feast day on their liturgical calendar merely sends them to the stores, shopping for holiday food and decorations! There is much for us all to re-learn from the Church’s actual teachings!
Well, just thank you for your writings.
October 30th, 2009 @ 5:51 am
Looking ahead, Pentecost Monday will actually be recognized as a Federal Holiday (aka Memorial Day).
Like you said, with family scattered across long distances, it is necessary to utilize vacation time to make trips. In a normal world, one’s family would either live in the same house or very close by such that one did not need to “visit” his relatives during a vacation. Then there is paternity leave for which I need to budget.
In my line of work, it would be difficult to keep to your plan exactly, but I’m going to try. You should add Holy Thursday; that would allow being able to go to Tenebrae all three mornings!
November 3rd, 2009 @ 11:40 am
Kris, thank you for your kind comment, and sorry for the delay in approving it. For some reason I don’t always get emails anymore when comments are sitting in the queue. But now that one has been approved you should be able to comment without needing approval.
John, I am defiantly very lucky that my work schedule is as flexible as it is. Which is partly why I feel like I should make better effort observe the major feast days. Now if I can just come up with a way to follow the Codex Theodosianus and take Holy Week through Easter week off!
December 10th, 2009 @ 9:42 am
[...] is why I decided to allocate my vacation time for the observance the Church’s holidays. I’m tired of letting the secular world dictate the days that receive reverence. Of course we [...]