Juneteenth is a relatively new holiday, which is something
else. My usual experience with holidays is that they just exist and that’s the
way it’s always been. Since time immemorial, since the foundation of the world.
God said, “Let there be light… and great savings this Memorial Day weekend!!!”.
It’s strange to welcome to the fold another day in the calendar year where I
can look forward to NOT going to work. The strange countenance of holiday
cognizance, one could say! (Maybe. I think that’s how words work…)
Holidays remind me of the Sabbath spoken of in the bible.
The concept of the sabbath has it’s own unique meaning in Judeo-Christian
tradition, but the cultural milieu of the Ancient Near East helps to further
contextualize the kind of mindset someone had when they entered into sabbath
with their deity. For Judeo-Christian adherents, it would have been a time of
important reflection. To observe with one’s whole being the establishing of
God’s order and dominion over the created order, including all the implications
that such a thing implies. It meant that one shouldn’t “work”. Why? Because God
provides all one needs to sustain life. The profound act that God “rested” on
the 7th day of creation meant that, unlike the pantheon of Gods in
the Ancient Near East (who constantly meddled with the affairs of Men and
wrestled for our affections and allegiances), God’s creation was
self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. He didn’t need shit from us.
Contrast this, however, with our holidays that the federal
government sprinkles over the calendar year like Salt Bae.
I think we’ve lost sight of the original intention for the
“holiday” in the United States. (I can’t speak for other countries, which have
their own history and traditions.) It’s an unfortunate consequence of
capitalism, which reduces everything to a dollar value. Holidays become sales
events and “days off” to disassociate mentally and physically from the rigors
of a 40-hour work week. To claw back control over unraveling responsibilities
that lie neglected in whatever crevasse we stuffed them into last. We don’t
stop to consider that Labor Day was meant to observe the dignity of workers and
the organizations they founded to enshrine the things we take for granted, like
8-hour work days and a two-day weekend. We don’t stop to consider the fallen
dead on Memorial Day, or stop to thank a member of the military for their
service on Veterans Day. (I’m sure it’s on your mind, but for how long. Do you
spend an entire day, thinking about it and reflecting on it?)
Juneteenth is significant to me because it’s a new holiday,
and its novelty has not yet yielded to indifference, or overexposure. The origin
of the day is also incredibly fucked up. (It should be a moniker of shame that it
took a whole two and a half years after the initial Emancipation Proclamation
for slaves to actually be set free.) Juneteenth is to be a sobering day, and a time
for reflection in general. We must come to terms that people who claimed to know
the gospel, profit motivated textile and agricultural industries, and elected
officials had to be forced by military action to see people as human beings,
not as property.
So, in summary, it’s my hope that we can look more
critically at holidays and what they stand for. As we await the Star-Trek
future of post scarcity, or bide our time until the collapse of civilization in
a resource war*, I will try to do this in earnest, at least. These days should
be seen as more than just the sum of their promotional sales or a missed opportunity to
clean out the garage.
*That is, unless Jesus returns before either of those things
to set all things right in his perfect justice and equity.
