Hell hath no fury like a European Communist denied a Christian holy day

While many of us tense up watching the unrest unfold in Greece, as the workers of this debt-laden nation protest that female pastry chefs and hairdressers can no longer retire at age 50 (given the "arduous and unhealthy" nature of their "jobs"), we can all take comfort in the fact that the French unions restored the nationwide vacation day of "Whitmonday," an ancient tradition left over from the Middle Ages observance of Pentecost on Sunday.

You see, in 2003, thousands of elderly French residents suffered or died as a result of a heat wave, so the French government tried to do away with the national Monday "post-Pentecost party" in 2005 and effectively donate the wage proceeds on that new "Day of Solidarity" to help these poor people. But the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT), a major trade union, would righteously have none of that.

In a 2005 OP-ED titled "Marxist Piety," the Wall Street Journal opined "Hell hath no fury like a French Communist denied a Christian day of leisure." It continued, "a self-avowedly secular Republic with diminishing church attendance fights Marxist -- aka the religion-as-opiate creed -- trade unions to drop a Christian holiday from the calender." CGT successfully objected to this state-sanctioned loss of leisure, and the French government restored the day after party in 2008, enabling the French to sustain their five-day weekend (the traditional Christian "Day of Ascension" precedes the Pentecost weekend on Thursday, which remains an official state holiday). As the WSJ concluded five years ago on this day, "In France, the real state religion is vacation." As you read this, millions of Europeans (including the now again liberated French) are happily lazing about today on May 24, continental crisis or no continental crisis.
Given this myopic, lack-of-work-ethic rubbish, is it any wonder that the New York Times today quotes a 50-year-old Italian worker lamenting the possible loss of his pension as stating "This country has no future"?

Postscript: lest you think I'm singling out the French for their national "post-Pentecost party," the day of state-sanctioned leisure is today also righteously observed by the following European countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, and Switzerland. A personal note to those governments: as you continue to spiral into unimaginable debt, enjoy your day off.

Oh, and by the way, during your time off today you might want to read a little passage addressed to Greeks from the book that authorized Pentecost observance in the first place - writing some 1,900 years ago to church members in northern modern-day Greece, the apostle Paul noted: "when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 'If a man will not work, he shall not eat.'" (I Thess. 3:10, NIV). Food for European Whitmonday thought, perchance?

Socialism and the Future of Europe

As the American economic recovery kind of chugs along, I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the Greece debt crisis. However, today's riots got my attention. Greece has had its own form of "big government" for several decades that America has been recently toying with. As other members of the European Union are requiring major austerity measures in exchange for multi-billion-euro bailout loans, we see ominous comments like this from German Chancellor Angela Merkel:

"Nothing less than the future of Europe, and with that the future of Germany in Europe, is at stake," Merkel told [German] lawmakers. "We are at a fork in the road."

Rampant Socialism in Greece, where one commentator said that nobody was even sure how many people actually worked for the government there, obviously has demonstrated a severe lack of capacity to meet 21st century demands.

Also ominously, states in America like California actually have worse budget and debt issues, and all of those are on a much larger scale (if California was a separate country outside of the U.S., its GDP alone would rank in the top 10 of all nations).

As our fragile global economy inches forward, methinks Greece bears careful watching.