The Vanishing American Summer and The Theology of Time Away from Work

As the summer of 2018 begins, many Americans will hit the road for vacation. Some will hit the road on a quest for fun. And while it will seem at times like the roadways are jammed with SUVs and the airport security lines overstuffed with travelers in Hawaiian shirts, Americans are just not taking vacation like they used to.

According to the 2017 State of American Vacation report, American workers took an average of 20.3 days of vacation every year from 1978 until 2000. The rate has dropped nearly every year since. This year, Americans will only take an average of 16 days off, essentially donating one week of personal time back to their employers. 

According to the study, this forfeiture of free time costs each individual employee $604/year, while the American economy loses out on $236 billion, to say nothing of the intangible cost of lost time with loved ones. Curiously, our personal drop in vacation days taken has no correlation with the number of vacation days provided by employers. Companies are giving the same or more vacation days than they were in 2000, with many firms now providing unlimited or self-managed paid time off.  Many businesses are simultaneously investing in technology that allows workers to set an out of office message and automatically delete any message that hits an inbox during paid time off. So whatever the reasons for the slow disappearance of the American vacation, the boss and the board room are apparently not to blame.

Perhaps the case of the vanishing vacation can be explained not as a product of individual companies but as a broader cultural trend. Despite the fact that firms are doling out more vacation days, and despite their supposed support for detachment from email, 79% of American workers still check their work email while on vacation. 24% of Americans check it frequently or constantly. Something, then, is causing us to take less vacation, and to be less engaged while we are on vacation, even as our employers might be telling us to do the opposite!

This should be worrisome, as every additional hour we give to our email is an hour we subtract from our relationships. Every day of vacation that we leave on the table is one less day that we can rest, recover, and restore our focus to be happier, more productive, and more valuable to employers. 

Theologically, this trend is alarming. One of the earliest assertions of scripture is that rest, contemplation, and reflection (often referred to as Sabbath) is built into the order of creation. The book of Genesis (Genesis 2:2-4) describes God's resting from creative work on the seventh day of creation not because God needed the day off, but because God's capacity to create is inextricably linked to God's ability to rest.

The day of rest is not required as an end in itself, but as the means through which God continues to sustain the work of creation, liberation, and redemption. God's rest on the seventh day continues into eternity, so that God's unceasing acts of creation, liberation, and redemption can never happen apart from God's sacred respite from labor. 

When God commands us to remember the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11), it is not to dictate that we all must take a day off every seven days, but is a reminder that we as God's creation can experience and participate in God's holy work only when we participate in God's holy rest.

Resting at the Memorial Union, Madison, WI

Employers seem to have a sense for this.

Though firms in a secular context might substitute words like "productivity" and "efficiency" for "redemption" and "liberation," the trend towards providing workers with more time off, and even encouraging mindfulness practices in the workplace, indicates that this logic reverberates far beyond the pages of scripture. 

Yet culturally and individually, we have an allergic reaction to rest. Our addiction to our inbox is so pervasive that it supplants our participation in sabbath rest, just as it keeps us from making the most of our vacation time. Perhaps the task of the church in a pluralistic, secularizing America is to call us all back to contemplation, prayer, reflection, and even vacation - to invite us all to briefly abstain from our labors - and our email.

When St. Paul Catholic Church recently opened its new church building on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, they boldly inscribed what is perhaps the single most important Bible verse for our work-addicted, vacation-deprived times. When one walks beneath these words while on the way to the library, to the state capitol, or to the office, they are reminded of God's unceasing invitation: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28)."

This summer, take those vacation days. God's work, the work given to you through your vocation, is waiting for you when you return. For now, pack the suitcase and the sunscreen. It is time to rest.

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Ryan Panzer (@ryanpanzer on Twitter) is a trainer at a software company and a Lutheran theologian. This July, he will be shutting off his email and taking a vacation. 

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