Thursday is an official holiday for Belgians. They don’t have to work, but they still get paid. Not to laze around, but because another duty has priority: collectively celebrating that Jesus has ascended into heaven. Every Catholic high day includes a church attendance and a mass. That is the meaning of such days. Even the law helps create the conditions to fulfill a higher than the labor obligation.
Sunday has been doing this for a long time, the seventh day on which God rested after completing His creation, so that believers could fulfill their Sunday duty (going to church). But many Belgians will still be lazing around on Thursday. Because they are not religious, because Ascension is not relevant in their religion, or because they do not take religious regulations very seriously.
In 2022, exactly half of Belgians still considered themselves Catholic. But if they still follow its rules, this only happens at major private moments, during baptisms (43,327 in 2022), weddings (6,947) or funerals (41,900, more than a third of all deaths). Celebrating together as a church community is hardly an option anymore: only 8.9 percent go to Sunday mass at least once a month.
Because what exactly is there to celebrate on Catholic holidays? For many, Ascension Day will mean nothing more than that official day off. The name says something about the reason, but what exactly it entails remains unknown. This certainly applies even more to Pentecost (the descent of the Holy Spirit), let alone that there would be much insight into the coherence of the procession of holidays in the Easter cycle, from Easter (calculated every year on the basis of moon phases), via Ascension (forty days later) to Pentecost (the second Sunday after).
The fact that many people go to the grave of a loved one on November 1 with chrysanthemums is even a mistake. After all, then it is All Saints’ Day, an official holiday, while the commemoration of All Souls’ Day only follows the day after, but that is not a day off.
Social achievement
Yet six out of ten official national holidays have a religious origin. Flemish civil servants get four more, two of which are Catholic (All Souls’ Day and Boxing Day), plus July 11 and, remarkably, King’s Day on November 15, but that is a legacy of Belgian civil service.
Traditionally, Belgium is rather sparing with civil holidays. For example, the First and Second World Wars must share a commemoration day, on November 11, the Armistice of 1918. The country simply remained dominantly Catholic until the 1960s. And even though the religiosity has eroded, the legacy remained. For most, the holidays have evolved from a religious high day to a day of vacation, from a Catholic obligation to a social achievement.
If holidays mean so little in terms of content, it seems reasonable to modernize them through more meaningful, more current days off. Such as with the Flemish Community festival on July 11, but that would cost employers extra money, which they demand in exchange for the recognition that another day off is being canceled. Not so.
What then of the more recent, meaningful plea to make May 8 a day off, commemorating the end of the Second World War in 1945, to make it a celebration of democracy? Paradoxically, it is precisely this social interpretation that seems to deter policy makers. Or is there something to be said for exchanging the almost generally meaningless Pentecost (actually Pentecost Monday) for a day off to celebrate Eid-al-Fitr, which does have an important, collective relevance for Muslim fellow citizens? That idea seems to be too ‘sensitive’ in political-identitarian terms. Holidays do not have to mean anything, except as a paid holiday.
