“To celebrate a festival means to do something which is in no way tied to other goals, which has been removed from all “so that” and “in order to.” True festivity cannot be imagined as residing anywhere but in the realm of activity that is meaningful in itself.

The further implication is, then, that anyone who is at a loss to say what activity that is meaningful in itself is will also be at a loss to define the concept of festivity. And if that incapacity is existential, instead of merely intellectual, then the prerequisite for achieving any kind of festivity is lacking. With the death of the concept of human activity that is meaningful in itself, the possibility of any resistance to a totalitarian laboring society also perishes (and such a regime could very well be established even without concomitant political dictatorship). It then becomes a sheer impossibility to establish and maintain an area of existence which is not preempted by work.”

Joseph Pieper, In Tune with the World: a Theory of Festivity, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999 [orig. 1963]), 9.