Buon Ferragosto: An Old Roman Holiday in a New Avatar

Dear FO° Reader,

Today is Pakistan’s independence day, tomorrow it is India’s and you can read Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh’s reflections here as he travels around India.

Tomorrow is also Italy’s big summer holiday: Ferragosto. It’s a day off to go to the beach, sure, but on a scale that defies comparison to anything like Labor Day in the US. Nearly everyone takes off time from work simultaneously. I’ve spent two summers in Italy. I saw Rome, the bustling capital city of three million people, empty out. Even Milan, the hardworking city of business, is deserted on Ferragosto. City dwellers beat the heat (and the mosquitos) at the beach or in the mountains, or they travel to see family. They won’t be back at the office until September.

My roommate in Milan, a native of Varese, complained to me once that the annual ritual was “provincial.” He complained that the two-week countrywide vacation was one of the things holding Italy back economically. For all I know, this could be true. But, like all rituals, it tells a truth that goes beyond the apparently futile physical action done. This national sabbath attests that there is more to national life than the endless pursuit of wealth.

Beautiful view of Emperor Augustus Caesar on the island of Capri and the Mediterranean.

Ferragosto takes its name from the Feriae Augusti, or the holidays of Augustus. They served to link together the traditional summer festivals and create a vacation just after the hard work of the harvest. Slaves and even beasts of burden were allowed to rest. The emperor set the holidays to begin on the first day of August, the month he would soon dedicate to himself as Augustus — the guardian of the state and guarantor of peace.

Centuries later, the Pope transferred the observance to August 15 to coincide with the feast of the Assumption, which commemorates the raising of Mary, the mother of Jesus, into heaven with her body intact. Now, the liberation from drudgery symbolized not only liberation from chaos and wars but the liberation from the confines of mortal life.

In the 20th century, the dictator Benito Mussolini added a third layer of propaganda to the holiday. The state offered heavily discounted train tickets to the masses, and Fascist organizations conducted trips to Italy’s cultural and national landmarks. It was during this period that the Italian tradition of simultaneous summer vacationing began. The liberation this time was from the parochialism of the village. Millions of Italians left their hometowns and saw the Mediterranean, the Alps, the ruins of Rome and the art of Florence for the first time.

The tyranny of profit has a way of suppressing everything that cannot be made productive in narrow, quantitative terms. We are not slaves, and we do not (hopefully) have a fascist dictator, but so many of us live lives in which we are not free to dispose of our own time. Modern people may work less than their ancestors did 100 years ago, but in a digital age work increasingly bleeds into private life. When we do have downtime, distracting entertainment like television and cell phone use bleeds this time away. Meanwhile, activities that enrich us and put us back in touch with our minds instead of distracting us — like reading, spending time with friends, prayer and art appreciation — are on the decline, at least in the US. We are burning ourselves out.

Some new emperor is probably not going to give us a day off any time soon. Unless you are retired, you will probably spend tomorrow working. But, when you can, claim some time back and think. Really, think. Take the long way home — not in a romantic stop-and-smell-the-roses way (although a little of that probably wouldn’t kill you either), but in a way that gives your mind time to disengage from the events of the day and from the constant stream of information in your pocket. Think about what true political justice would look like, or whether the soul exists after death, or even about how wonderful of a creature a butterfly really is. If you are fortunate enough to pull enough time together to read something longer than a social media post, why not read one of our magazines or a book from one of our partners?

The middle of August is as good a time as any.

Cordiali saluti,

Anton Schauble
Chief of Staff

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