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Most federal holidays have no real meaning to most of us; Memorial Day is a barbecue with flag napkins, Labor Day is one last long weekend with summer weather. It’s almost a revelation to remember that they do in fact have meanings; that they’re part of a civic culture we still share even if we don’t quite realize it. Now, if you’ve lost someone in the military, nobody has to remind you about Memorial Day. And if you’re a working-class person, there’s a good chance you work on Labor Day. The rest of us have it easy.

The mantra of the Benedictines—the Catholic monastic order—is “work and pray.” This is my suggestion for an update: work hard, pray hard. I wrote recently about thinking of housework as “liturgy.” That idea that all of everyday life is a sort of prayer or elevated kind of work; I like that a lot.

So those habits and routines are liturgy. They lift up the ordinary; they turn repetition into a kind of prayer. Instead of saying “How can you just recite 10 Hail Marys and call that prayer?” I would say, maybe even cracking that egg and grabbing that dish soap every morning is a kind of prayer.

I think it’s probably the case that we don’t fully appreciate labor; that we look down on and take for granted the tasks that keep things running.

The pandemic showed us how much sheer work goes into just maintaining what we have. That’s a very temperamentally conservative insight—Burkean. Yet, at least as far as labor and staffing issues go, it sort of codes as politically progressive. But you don’t need political philosophy to see it these days. when you walk into a restaurant and you can sense the place just isn’t able to quite keep up, or when there’s some mistake at the supermarket, or what have you, you’re seeing the cracks that form in a complicated system accustomed to more workers, more training, more handing down of knowledge.

Whatever the reason, of which everyone has their own—inflation, corporate greed, too much immigration, not enough immigration—it’s made me appreciate the difficulty of running and working for these kinds of everyday businesses a lot more. I have a piece coming out soon on how the customer experience in restaurants has really declined—and not bounced back—since the pandemic. But at the same time I get how tough it is and I don’t think it’s easy to just “go back” when we really can’t.

You can complain, but you have to remain kind and charitable. You can use these small deprivations as a chance not to become frustrated at every turn, but to find solidarity with people in less fortunate situations, who, of course, are feeling the same crunch too. I don’t know too much about Labor Day’s history, but I think that fits.

Related Reading:

Good Friction

The Rhythm of the Seasons

Cultivating Contentment

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