Where are those old holidays!

On the occasion of this article, which coincides with the holiday, I would first like to wish everyone a happy holiday. I hope we have a holiday full of peace, joy, and health.

Holidays are beautiful. No matter what, a sense of relief and peace fills us during the holidays. We feel good. We rush about in a sweet flurry of holiday preparations. Some of us rush toward the holiday with the excitement of meeting relatives, spouses, and friends, while others do so with the excitement of taking a break from the tiring routine of daily life.

While national holidays stir up nationalist feelings, religious holidays elevate feelings related to religion and faith. However, let us not ignore the cultural aspect of holidays. This is perhaps one of the most important reasons why each holiday awakens warm feelings within us and creates enthusiasm. What is cultural is also social. Since the times when people began to live in communities, they have established social structures and created culture by communicating, interacting, and sharing with one another. Cultures have formed the character of societies and have gained functionality as a distinguishing feature of societies. The religious and faith-based orientations of societies are also synthesized with their cultures to determine the general character of the entire society. Holidays also take their place within the life journeys of societies as segments that express victory, success, sanctification, and therefore enthusiasm. These moments of enthusiasm gain continuity within the culture, focused on unity, solidarity, and sharing. Therefore, holidays are beautiful.

Holidays are beautiful and meaningful because they express integration, unity, solidarity, and sharing. This is the reason for the peace and joy that fills us. Unity, solidarity, sharing, integration. Humans are social beings; therefore, integrating and sharing with their social environment makes them happy. They realize they are not alone and feel safe. In this respect, holidays have a special place and meaning, especially in today's urban societies. The role of holidays is important in slightly alleviating the feelings of alienation and loneliness that urban society creates in the individual.

Holidays express coming together, reconciliation, and therefore peace. Holidays play an important role in people's integration with their social environment and in ending resentments and grievances to ensure reconciliation. If only holidays could contribute to world peace in this sense. But the material-focused ambition for power of the capitalist system has penetrated so deeply that, unfortunately, it seems almost impossible to alleviate it even with holidays.

If only the massacre in Gaza could have been stopped for the holiday. If only the children could have caught their breath, even for a moment, and had smiles on their faces, hope in their eyes, and been able to eat some candy. If only they could have felt for a moment that the world is not just about bloodshed, violence, and pain, and that there is a side to it worth living.

Holidays are periods of time that offer opportunities for people to come together and for inequalities between people to be eliminated, or at least postponed, even if only for a short time. But it hurts to see that this is no longer the case today. Those moments when the rich shared their bread, meat, and sugar with their poor neighbors have now become history. At least in large cities, we can see that sharing, coming together, and closeness are no longer very common. While for the rich, the holiday creates an opportunity for a break toward a luxury different from the mundane luxury of daily life, for the poor, it causes poverty to be felt more deeply. Unfortunately, the drama of parents who cannot buy new clothes for their children for the holiday or give them pocket money is turning into a tragedy.

The way the holiday tradition is experienced naturally varies according to the social environment, cultural segment, region, and locality. In rural areas, villages, and towns where traditional life prevails, holidays are experienced a bit more in accordance with their own character. However, in today's world, where the majority of the population lives in cities, we can observe that holidays are not experienced as they once were. Therefore, a cultural form, a meaningful tradition that brings society together and integrates it, is gradually losing its function in parallel with the changing economic and social conditions. Today, for most people, holidays carry no meaning beyond a vacation program. Visiting elders, small-scale gatherings, and coming together certainly still continue, but it can be said that these are also rapidly decreasing as generations get younger. This is often the reason for the elders' lament, "Where are those old holidays?"

But despite everything, holidays are still beautiful.