The bells began ringing throughout the island at 7am. They rang again from every church of every size several times throughout the morning – without any interval or pattern I could make out. March 10th is V-Day in most of Europe and 77 years after the Second World War's End, it remains the most defining event of modern times even as the number of people who lived it are dwindling – perhaps because our world was shaped in its shadow. Our map, the wealth of nations, the trajectory of technology, the pain that individuals and families carried – all stem from a cataclysmic, fractured, almost incomprehensible to any one person constellation of events that gets tied together under the giant banner of World War II.
As old as some of the churches here are, I've learned already the bells are in excellent working order. In my seven weeks on Patmos, I've already experienced Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, the entire week of Orthodox Easter, Greek National Day and Labor Day. Bells run through all of these holidays.
Somehow, despite all the bell-ringing and holiday-making, I have felt holiday-less myself. None these celebrations are mine (except maybe V-Day, because it's everyone's – but still, not my country's culture). Being possibly the only Jew on Patmos, I missed Passover – which was fine, I've missed holidays before while traveling.
Yet, maybe for the first time when staying abroad, I find myself missing holidays – feeling like I'm in a holiday desert. That's probably because whatever our level of belief, patriotism or devotion to labor, holidays are the markers of our lives. Agrarian societies tended/tend to organize holidays by the seasons and the stars – bring meaning and markers to the phases of the year. Examine how many religious/cultural holidays around the world align the with vernal and autumnal equinoxes from Jewish Sukkot to Chinese Moon or Mid-Autumnal Festival (interestingly starting the same night and both cultures using lunar calendars….) to Oktoberfest. The idea of spring celebrations and thankfulness for the harvest abound.
More importantly than marking secular time, holidays give us reason to pause and to turn toward one another. We celebrate as families and communities. In today's world, maybe we plan a vacation around holidays – extending off the extra day or days we're given from work. Christmas in New York, London or Jerusalem; Spring Break in the Caribbean, Paris or Disneyland. Our time to rest, depart from the day-to-day grind and connect with each other is vital for human flourishing. If everything is work, there is no joy and if everything is vacation, there is no appreciation. We need a balance.
Americans have increasingly abandoned this idea. There are 11 federal public holidays of which most private businesses only adopt six – New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, usually skipping Martin Luther King Day, Presidents' Day, Juneteenth, Columbus Day and Veterans Day. I always take umbrage with how often MLK Day is skipped – it seems like one of the most meaningful and important holidays to me and companies that put diversity in their values still don't usually stop for it. Also, in this abbreviated six-holiday corporate calendar, it's a long slog from New Year's Day to Memorial Day. It's no wonder that productivity and attendance drop off at the end of the year – everyone spent the first half of the year without a break.
Of course, people can take vacation time – if their employer offers it, which many small businesses don't. For me personally, vacations also help create book-ends for periods of my life. I often see time periods as being between this vacation and that one because the break up the status quo and nothing is every quite the same when you return. I like to nail down my next trip as soon as the last one ends so I can look forward to the next marker.
Still, I think there is a qualitative difference between vacation and a holiday – where everyone gets a collective break with that communal sigh of relief. Best yet, a holiday means no work building up and waiting for you back at the office, or shop, or whatever your workplace. The entire thing stops.
Vacations are also critical to our well-being and I'm always concerned when people don't take them, but they don't bring us all together the way holidays do and they don't facilitate a collective consciousness that marks time and signals the seasons of our lives.
In the past, when traveling I (and we during the years with Emily) tended to inject myself into local holidays with curiosity. There's always that fine balance between being curious and invasive so I tend to start by observing and come further in if that seems appropriate and acceptable. I learned the Thai holidays of Songkran and Loy Krathong. In Taiwan it was impossible not to absorb Chinese New Year, Dragon Boat festival, Lantern Festival and of course my beloved Moon Festival. In other places I gained Divali/Deepavali/Tihar, Eid, Nyepi, Galungan, Saraswati and the national days and royal birthdays of a variety of countries. I'm not sure we ever got so involved in another culture's holiday as Emily and I – and really mostly Emily – in the Balinese New Year, Nyepi which is THE holiday of Bali involving creating ornate figurines of evil spirits, parading them to the ocean and burning them. Emily not only managed to photograph a good many of the local Ogoh-Ogohs, as they are called, but she was the only foreigner and woman who walked into a local village cockfight and took photos. No one seemed to care she was there or photographing.
Maybe it was because of where I am emotionally or perhaps because the term Orthodox Easter has a somber tone to it – or maybe just that it overlapped with Passover and something about going to a Christian celebration while neglecting my own felt dishonorable – but I didn't feel like the Easter on Patmos was for me to explore. Somehow skipping Purim for Nyepi didn't have the same conflict. Maybe it was that no one was going to mistake me for an adherent of Balinese animistic Hinduism.
However it's come to pass, time feels sort of stretched out and aimless. I have a routine, things to do, love Patmos, am grateful for this place and time that are helping me through a difficult period, but there's a flatness. No stopping for Passover, no Shabbat services, no get togethers with friends or family – no markers of time or common experiences. Everything this trip is my experience and it has been up to me to define it. My interactions with people are lovely and completely my choice. I have no birthdays, meeting or appointments to attend. No social obligations to fulfill other than answering or returning a call. I am free from the ties that bind which is relieving, empowering and at times disheartening. One of the hardest parts of life is discerning your own meaning and purpose. Being alone forces you to do that everyday. Without anyone else's needs on our plates and no interdependencies – we have to derive our own answer to who we are and what we're doing. That can be freeing or it can lead to constant existential crisis.
Human nature is to want whatever you don't currently have. When we're overwhelmed with togetherness and social and interpersonal obligations, we want a break – alone time. When we're too solitary, we crave social interaction and connection. Striking the balance – particularly in the age of the nuclear family – is difficult. In my experience, the paradox of suburban life is that people are hungry for community and overwhelmed with interpersonal obligation. It's inherent to our single-family dwelling, nuclear family structure – especially if a nuclear family is far from extended family. Americans have underplayed the critical role of grandparents, aunts and uncles for too long and you can see the price paid in parents' faces. People who have it all are frequently some of the loneliest and most exhausted.
Generally, the best answer to meaning is to find it in the space between each other. That sharing of self, being understood, valuing one another, being appreciated, expressing gratitude – being there for each other through life's tribulations – that's the good stuff. When we're linked in healthy interdependent relationships, we become grounded and fulfilled. The challenge, of course, is find the who, where and when of these interdependent relationships. Traditionally, we were born into them. You can still see how Italian, Jewish, Persian, Armenian and Greek families – for example – tend to have more of this cultural proclivity for togetherness and connection. Yet with every generation after immigrating, the bonds and habits weaken.
American society has so many options – so many ways to uproot, transplant and reinvent yourself. Choice is wonderful. Choice is scary. Without living in relation to others, we lose the ability to see ourselves. People are our mirrors – we remember who we are and what matters because of them. On the other hand, we can be subsumed by them and find ourselves living in paradigms and under beliefs that are not our own. What good is a life lived without purpose and intention? There has to be enough of our individuality and agency to thrive.
Here lies the delicate, tenuous balance we all so carefully seek.
I need holidays to remind me not just of how the year is progressing, but that interdependence is critical. I need them also to remind me there are human emotions and functions we must all go through – celebratory, somber, painful and joyous – and that these things are best done together. "There is a season for every purpose under heaven…." Even for burning your Ogoh-Ogohs and casting them into the sea.
I also need enough room in life to breathe – to be me. Even in the midst of valuable interdependency, I can't lose or forget myself. I can't perpetually deny myself to please others. But that doesn't mean I rise up to "claim my voice" and "find my authenticity" as a license to do whatever I want. Instead, I must negotiate for my space within the web of connectedness. My children will benefit from a father who is both comfortably himself and comfortably connected in communal and family bonds because they will need the same someday and too few of us grew up with solid examples of people striking this balance. Just as importantly, I will benefit from maintaining that balance. My life is made of the meaning I create with others while giving myself the gift to breathe freely.
