This is not true.
First, the timespan and vast differences of local laws makes this generalisation pointless.
Second, for anyone who was a serf or landless or didn’t had enough land to feed himself and his family it’s right out of the bat, they worked dawn till dusk nearly entire year, there was always something more to do. People today working multiple jobs just to survive and still being crushed by debt can relate.
Third, even if we look at this meme in the most generous way possible, that is portraying free wealthy peasants (which were usually a minority), 150 days a year are only typical field work. Outside of that they still need to do after field works (for example threshing and cleaning grain was taking months each year), tend to animals, produce nearly every tool, item and cloth they use in house and field, and so on and on and on. And while some of the big holidays like Easter were free of work, 90% of those “church holidays” didn’t mean “free of work”, most of them meant literally nothing but a way for illiterate peasants to mark the passage of time, for example they didn’t say “15 november”, they said “4 days after St Martin” (it worked precisely because there were so many holidays in calendar).
So no, unless you’re really fucked to work 14+ hour workdays for 6/7 days per week with just a few red days in calendar and no paid vacation you do not have less holidays than a medieval peasant.
And last disclaimer, this don’t even mean that capitalism good, though it did bring an improvement in many times and places, but it’s that we shouldn’t try to romanticise other bad times.
We should move forward to socialism.
Thank you, I’m tired of this people thinking this is true. I believe it was 150 days of working their lord’s lands, the rest was working on the land they were allowed to live on to sustain themselves through winter.
Again it depends on the time and place and laws, for example early medieval peasants in Poland worked for their lords around 10-20 days per year, which increased to 100-150 in late medieval (king peasants usually had it better than church peasants and private noble peasants had worst), but XVIII century serfs were worked to the bone to the levels that foreign noble travellers were shocked with the inhuman treatment serfs recieved.
For added detail, vegetation season in Europe is around 180-220 days, not to mention tyranny of weather knows no compromise, so there were cases where peasants literally died because they were forced to work for their lord and missed for example optimal sowing season.
There is a big difference between doing work that only increases the profits of the rich and further alienates you and your community and making a new sweater because you want one.
Sure they did more tasks, but it’s not like we don’t do chores all day outside of work and on holidays.
They did 150 days of labour for the wealthy and we do 200. Then they do chores from when they wake until they sleep most days and so do we. I’d rather do more chores for myself and less work for my boss thank you very much
There is a big difference between doing work that only increases the profits of the rich and further alienates you and your community and making a new sweater because you want one.
I think if those peasants heard that, they would introduce you to the working end of some farming tools for suggesting their hard struggle against hunger and cold is “new sweater because you want one”, which is absolute disgusting reductionism.
Sure they did more tasks, but it’s not like we don’t do chores all day outside of work and on holidays.
Yeah we do, still way less than they did labour necessary to maintain their homes.
Then they do chores from when they wake until they sleep most days and so do we. I’d rather do more chores for myself and less work for my boss thank you very much
Again nice reduction of their heavy toil for “chores”, you would absolutely shit yourself and died if you had to live like them, especially the literal slave serfs.
Do you have proof? Also let me guess, they planted bananatrees in the winter?
Proof for what? Vegetation season being shorter than entire year in Europe?
Also let me guess, they planted bananatrees in the winter?
Seems you agree they didn’t, so why the hostility
Sources for the OP would be good as well.
Note that “medieval peasant” is a meaningless term because the European Middle Ages span 1000 years and countless countries and cultures with varying conditions for “peasants”.
i don’t think the holiday thing is universally true either, but it makes for an impactful bit.
The church did have a lot of holidays back then but that didn’t mean people didn’t have to work on all of those.
Even if they didn’t work, the alternative was probably 11 hours of church for any holidays that aren’t still huge today like Christmas or Mardi Gras.
It was true, but having a holiday didn’t mean you can relax and chill.
It meant your landlord can’t force you to work for them on those days, so you had time to work on your own crops, care for your livestock, make firewood, fix stuff, do the laundry by hand, sell your crops at the market, etc.
You’d still work almost every day from sunrise to sunset, just to survive.I think a big part of the reason this gets romanticized is just how utterly alienated people are from their own labor now.
Yes, it says a lot about current labor conditions when people yearn for the working life of a medieval peasant.
That honestly sounds pretty relatable for a lot of working people. In their “off time,” they’re doing housework, caring for their children, shopping for food, driving for uber, or making crafts to sell on etsy. Hell, my sister’s a teacher and she’s still got very little time to actually relax with two elementary aged children, teaching night and summer classes at a college as well as high school, and preserving food to sell it at local farmers markets. She’s most of the way to owning her modest house, and she doesn’t live an insane lifestyle, but she and her husband are both teachers and the cost of living is simply too high for them to cover their mortgage, gas, groceries, clothes for their kids, and utilities, while putting away for retirement and their kids’ college funds without them having to pick up extra work. The rest of their time is spent mostly on lesson preparation/corrections, housework, food preparation, and childcare.
It’s possible for some people to bypass a lot of that inconvenience with money, and some people can reduce their lifestyles to make ends meet with little money while keeping free time but a lot of people are performing some kind of labor most of the time.
It may have been true in one particular place at one particular time? I wouldn’t know. In any case, whoever came up with this (and it’s been making the rounds for quite a while) seems to be trying to obfuscate something with their phrasing (or doesn’t know what they’re talking about).
They got frequent time off from working their lord’s fields, sure … that was the time they were allowed to work their own fields, so they could perhaps not starve that winter.
And in the winter there wasn’t anything to do than trying not to freeze and starve to death.
Oh there was absolute tons of thing to do, i mentioned threshing and cleaning grain in the other posts, this was usually done through autumng well into winter, also maintaining their houses, taking care of animals (you don’t know how to live like peasant until you try to spend entire winter in one or two rooms together with farm animals), and making and repairing all kinds of tools, clothes, furniture, and all other things needed.
It’s not entirely wrong that there was less labour done in winter though, but it was mostly restricted by shorter day hours.
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You couldn’t pump a medieval peasant full of anti-depressants to make them think they weren’t miserable.
You actually could, priests were always ready with their message of “ora et labora”, and the noble priviledge of producing and selling alcohol was widespread and sometimes leds to alcoholism epidemic, like in the eastern Europe which held for over three centuries and still haven’t entirely pass (yes, the stereotype of Pole or Russian as heavy drunkards and alcoholics comes literally from nobles flooding peasants and workers with alcohol)
source?
Farms don’t have holidays and I’d your lord needs a few hands you better help him our you’ll loose yours. Message is right tho.
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