WE ALL know that holidays, our allegedly secular annual outings, getting away from the familiar, refreshing and renewing ourselves somewhere else, were originally holy days: the saints’ days and festivals when even the humble farm labourer had some time off, some festivity, and, with luck, some specially brewed ale and other bounties from the landlord.

But perhaps even modern holidays are not quite so severed from their sacral roots as we suppose. For a start, there is something gloriously irrational and counter-intuitive about them. As Maggie and I pack for our holidays, I’m aware of all the reversals involved; reversals and turnings upside-down that have about them a certain Kingdom quality.

We have plenty, but, for a couple of weeks, we choose to make do with less. The full wardrobes are left behind, and we discover that we can manage with what fits into a trundling suitcase. We leave behind the house, with its sitting room and study, and head for a B&B, where all we have is just the one room.

And we are glad to do so — not least because there is something else that we leave behind: an insistent voice that has become louder and louder in the modern economy. The voice that says “Be productive! Achieve! Improve! Do better than last week! Compete! Strive to shine over others! You’re only as good as your last gig!” That tyrannical voice recedes as we drive north, and will soon be silenced by the peaceful lapse and spill of waves on a Northumbrian beach; and we will be washed, relaxed, and cleansed by “The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores”, as Keats so wonderfully put it.

We will leave the harassed world of doing and enter the sacred kingdom of pure being, with nothing to achieve, nothing to prove, just the pure bliss of being God’s children. And, being there, on that shore, both physically and spiritually, summons and opens out all the layers of memory: the holiday seasons going back to our infancy. Wordsworth felt it, too:

Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither —
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Indeed, there is a movement even in what might be thought of as secular circles, for a return to pilgrimage, to giving a journey spiritual purpose and aura, as witnessed by the many who take their holiday weeks to walk on the Camino to Santiago, or the Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury. Readers of Chaucer will know that those holy-day pilgrimages were also holidays in all the modern sense of frivolity, camaraderie, storytelling, and festivity.

And, if the holidaymaker is also a churchgoer, then there is the pleasure of visiting the local church, familiar to locals but new to us. The liturgy is familiar enough to get us through, but we have new windows to gaze at, new neighbours in the pews, a different preacher, and, if we’re lucky, a different churchmanship; a chance to savour some of the amazingly varied and distinct flavours of Anglicanism, rather than just having another pint of “the usual”. Sometimes, that means that we suddenly appreciate something in our wider traditions, or, more importantly, something substantial in our faith that was hitherto over-familiar, or else entirely overlooked.

So, bring on the holidays, which turn out to be, after all, what they always were: holy days.