Another holiday season is coming to an end as I write and I wonder ‘What is the point of it all?’
If I remember rightly from my early modern history at Cambridge, summer holidays (as a distinct and expected season of rest for a large majority of the population) is a fairly recent invention.
Harvest origins
It bears the rhythm of the farm. School summer holidays the world over were set around the particular cycle of the climate with relation to harvest to enable the maximum possible number of young willing (or not so willing) labourers to help out in the fields getting in the harvest.
