Comment by thinkingemote
3 months ago
People in medieval times had more time off not working than today. Feast days were actual feast days, they often didn't work during them. Feast days were not something written on a calendar that only a few people could consult and say "hmm, oh look today is the feast day of such and such... meh, what's for supper?" :-)
They had to a greater or lesser extent, fairs, games, dances - they were literally festivals. People looked forward to and prepared in advance for feast days. There are at least 2 things that I think are relevant: firstly feast days punctuated and delimited the calendar and people's lives and secondly feast days were very memorable shared whole-community events.
This doesn't necessarily make the story more believable but it can make it more memorable. Think of a story where it says "it happened at Halloween and again at Christmas" and it could just help fix that story in a specific time making it more memorable in our brains.
Sorry, you think early-modern indentured sharecropping subsidence farmers without dishwashers, laundry machines, sewing machines, or industrialized clothing production worked less than 2080 hours a year?
Subsidence farming is a brutally demanding, painful way to scrape a living. Even with modern technology, it can't be overstated the sheer amount of labor it takes to grow enough food just to feed yourself, and that's without owing an obscene portion of your product to your "landlord" (who's also your employer and your local government, and can forbid you freedom of movement and dictate your personal life).
Laundry was an immense amount of labor. Keeping the home intact took labor. Maintaining your clothes took labor.
Look up the the BBC historic farm series if you want an idea of the amount of work it takes to actually run a farm, without any of the extra problems actually living in that period would bring, such as not understanding germ theory and sanitation, unreliable access to clean water, no real medical care, no real birth control, and no defense against a bad season just breaking your back.
https://acoup.blog/2025/07/11/collections-life-work-death-an... has a ten part series on the topic.
A good observation. Of course medieval people worked harder and died earlier and they had more days off working. The focus of my comment was on time and not energy and specifically about festivals on which people took time not to work and to take part in the festival. Or at the very least took time to notice more than not noticing or said "meh" to :-)
"Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's" https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
"Historians Explain: Medieval Peasants Took More Leisure Time Than Today’s ‘Wage Slave’ Workers" https://tlio.org.uk/medieval-workers-short-days-long-holiday...
However, Snopes gives the theory a mixed rating: Medieval Peasants Only Worked 150 Days Due to 'Frequent, Mandatory' Holidays? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/medieval-peasant-only-work... worth a read if you are interested, dear reader, it's thorough.
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Interestingly it seems like some socialists and Anarchists also point to the theory and use it to show that Capitalism has vastly increased work on people. Can certainly see the green anarchism application with a non-exploited rural country with people with more personal and communal freedoms. I have not come across a capitalist historian refutation where the Capitalists and urbanisation lead to less exploitation, but I'd be happy to read one. Ideas promoting labour-saving technology could be adopted by any ideology.
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