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On Holidays

Of the days we can call a holiday -- a day for worship, gathering, celebration -- truly, a day that ought not to be for work, the right of all free men to enjoy for themselves as they wish -- these days can be assigned to arbitrary positions of the sun or moon's cycle. There is no other suitable way to really determine a holiday than by paying notice to those great lights above our head. Some cultures reckon dates based on the flows of tides, and this is well and good for them; but modern man is not just a man of the village, but of the world, which is why this should not be the ultimate.

Solar calendars should be the foundation for holidays. In one aesthetic sense, the sun is the best sign for days worthy of celebration: it's our relation to the sun that determines not just seasons, but with them the natural cycles of fauna and flora, human metabolism and emotion, and thus economic and even military occasions. Deeper still, all our significant energy on this earth comes from the sun, directly (solar panels, photosynthesis) and indirectly (winds, consumption of plants, consumption of herbivores...)

Lunar holidays, it has often been said, make the most sense for people occupying space near the equator for the simple reason that the relative lengths of day and night do not seem to change as they do nearer the poles. We can see one absurdity in the observance of holidays by assigning the dates of Eid al-Fitr to the Gregorian calendar: the end of Ramadan comes 11 days sooner more or less each year! It was celebrated in Spring 1990, winter 2000, summer in the 2010s, and will be celebrated in the spring again in the 2020s, etc. While Eid al-Fitr makes some sense for some members of a religion in one narrow band of the world, it's irrelevant for the majority of humans, in part according to that same sense.

The church had good sense in making Easter partially depend on the solar calendar, but this sense was equally met by folly for making it partially depend on not only the lunar calendar but also the Gregorian, as it occurs on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Much wiser authority placed All Saints Day and Christmas in relation to one of the two major solar occasions, namely, the winter solstice.

Both of the major solstices, eg the most Northern and most Southern days of the sun, relative to our 23.5 degree tilt do exist for the same reason the moon, its phases, and the tides exist -- along with, likely, water and terrestrial gold. And moon phases are still easier to directly witness and discuss vulgarly. But the sublimity of the December and June solstices cannot be escaped even in temperate zones. Indeed, the solstices are still quite visible from the equator, and appropriately have architecture devoted to them.