"those rootless celebrations, carefully and unspontaneously prepared beforehand, and as artificial as a maypole"

"a feast 'without gods', and unrelated to worship, is quite simply unknown.  It is true that ever since the French Revolution attempts have repeatedly been made to manufacture feast days and holidays that have no connection with divine worship, or are sometimes even opposed to it:  'Brutus days', or even that hybrid, 'Labor Day'.  In point of fact the stress and strain of giving them some kind of festal appearance is one of the very best proofs of the significance of divine worship for a feast; and nothing illustrates so clearly that festivity is only possible where divine worship is still a vital act—and nothing shows this so clearly as a comparison between a living and deeply traditional feast day, with its roots in divine worship, and one of those rootless celebrations, carefully and unspontaneously prepared beforehand, and as artificial as a maypole."

Josef Pieper, Leisure:  the basis of culture, trans. Alexander Dru (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 2009 [1963/1952]), 66.  "Certainly we must ask whether the great epoch of artificial festivals ['devoid of the true and ultimate affirmation of the world that is the essence of the festive'] is not still to come" (66).