Note 223 — Chapter III · HOLY DAYS

“In economic theory,” writes Dr. Thorstein Veblen, “sacred holidays are obviously to be construed as a season of vicarious leisure performed for the divinity or saint in whose name the tabu is imposed and to whose good repute the abstention from useful effort on those days is conceived to inure. The characteristic feature of all such seasons of devout vicarious leisure is a more or less rigid tabu on all activity that is of human use.... Sacred holidays, and holidays generally, are of the nature of a tribute levied on the body of the people. The tribute is paid in vicarious leisure, and the honourific effect which emerges is imputed to the person or the fact for whose good repute the holiday has been instituted. Such a tithe of vicarious leisure is a perquisite of all members of the preternatural leisure class and is indispensable to their good fame. Un saint qu’on ne chôme pas is indeed a saint fallen on evil days” (The Theory of the Leisure Class, New York, 1899, pp. 309 sq.).