Appreciation is essentially the secular term for "worship".
It could be said that the heart of leisure consists in ”festival.” In festival, or celebration, all three conceptual elements come together as one: the relaxation, the effortlessness, the ascendancy of ”being at leisure” [doing leisure, scholen agein] over mere ”function.” But if celebration and festival are the heart of leisure, then leisure would derive its innermost possibility and justification from the very source whence festival and celebration derive theirs. And this is worship.
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To experience and live out a harmony with the world, in a manner quite different from that of everyday life - this, we have said, is the meaning of” festival.” But no more intensive harmony with the world can be thought of than that of” Praise of God,” the worship of the Creator of this world.
Now, as I have often experienced, this statement is often received with a mixture of discomfort and various other feelings, but its truth cannot be denied. The most festive festival that can be celebrated is religious worship, or” cult,” and there is no festival that does not get its life from such worship or does not actually derive its origin from this.
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There is no worship” without the gods,” whether it be mardi gras or a wedding. This is not intended to be a prescription; rather, it is necessarily so. The statement is made with certainty: a festival that does not get its life from worship, even though the connection in human consciousness be ever so small, is not to be found.
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