I’m going to use the word “vacation,” because it isn’t overloaded with the meaning of “holy day,” and you seem not to be asking about the latter.
Civilized working people spend a lot of time doing routine tasks, and don’t do a lot of learning or encountering new things or places, relative to the ancestral environment. We also tend to stay indoors or otherwise in environments unlike the ones we evolved to enjoy.
People often feel better when they leave their usual place, and go somewhere they can experience either a lot of novelty (being in a new place and seeing lots of new things and people) or a place that would have been especially advantageous (and therefore pleasant) in the ancestral environment (e.g. mountains, hills overlooking rivers, seashores). Since most people cannot afford to run a household while doing this, they do it at short stretches. This is called a vacation (or “going on holiday”).
Visiting family is another thing people tend to do in short intense bursts like that, as we tend to live much farther from family than we would have been in premodern societies.
Going somewhere to see or do a specific thing that’s of affirmative interest (e.g. pilgrimage) can be very different, though it’s often a pretext for a vacation (e.g. Canterbury Tales).
I’m going to use the word “vacation,” because it isn’t overloaded with the meaning of “holy day,” and you seem not to be asking about the latter.
Civilized working people spend a lot of time doing routine tasks, and don’t do a lot of learning or encountering new things or places, relative to the ancestral environment. We also tend to stay indoors or otherwise in environments unlike the ones we evolved to enjoy.
People often feel better when they leave their usual place, and go somewhere they can experience either a lot of novelty (being in a new place and seeing lots of new things and people) or a place that would have been especially advantageous (and therefore pleasant) in the ancestral environment (e.g. mountains, hills overlooking rivers, seashores). Since most people cannot afford to run a household while doing this, they do it at short stretches. This is called a vacation (or “going on holiday”).
Visiting family is another thing people tend to do in short intense bursts like that, as we tend to live much farther from family than we would have been in premodern societies.
Going somewhere to see or do a specific thing that’s of affirmative interest (e.g. pilgrimage) can be very different, though it’s often a pretext for a vacation (e.g. Canterbury Tales).