Heidegger says something very interesting about the festival, if I'm reading and remembering him right. It's in one of his parsings of Holderlin, the writer who was a thoroughly educated philosopher who instead wrote as a poet, in the short time that he had. (There are a few such fellows about.) The holiday comes before the festival. In other words, the preparation for the commingling of the divine and the earthly functions to mark the time of the observance, when we take a step back from the culture and recognize the larger reality. The festival itself is a specific engagement with the things of heaven, not at all a day off, or a celebration. The spirit of celebration, rather, inaugurates the time when men and gods (in Holderlin's language) are to engage in their common rites. The celebration marks the time, and then separately, the time fulfills its nature.
Adorno wasn't impressed with the American holiday. Benzedrene-fueled excess was the description, I think.
Given the events of recent years, I'm at some distance from the prevailing culture in my own country. I expect that the extraordinary difficulties will continue and increase in the coming times. An accident of birth, followed by inexplicably landing in several places marked by extraordinary corruption. But I've come to realize that what I've encountered is the spirit of the time in this culture. That which struck me as craven mediocrity when I encountered it was actually the prevailing spirit of a culture that exists to provide prosperity for between 60 and 70 percent of its society. This is a very high number in historical context (cf. Picketty's second book), so the artifice has an argument for itself. But the permissive spirit of "we're all in this together," combined with the distrust of higher things and ideological claims, while it might make for many happy backyard barbeques in Ohio, has some limitations as a governing civilizational claim. (And there is likely some question of how much of the prosperity is an inherent result of the abundance of the continent, rather than the civilizational posture.) There's an argument to be made that all my country has is its wealth, and everything else traces its justification from that. At any rate, my personal difficulties, as someone governed by ideas rather than hopes of empirical wealth and possessions, have been extraordinary. I've succeeded at every task and test according to its terms, but success here is apparently governed by other social norms.
So, then what is my relation to the festival?
Well, this is where the twofold nature of the holiday becomes important. If the festival is simply a leavening of society, a few days of sweetness and light (like the Czech fireman's ball in the film), then those outside the charm of the society have no real place in the festivities. But if we recognize that this leavening of things, the holiday, is merely prelude to the mingling of earth and heaven in the days of the festival, then the outsider has not merely a place, but a peculiarly strong claim to the time of a more true existence.
In the present time, the people in my country are buoyed along by a sort of non-rational exuberance. The mechanism underlying the society, that which provides the wealth, provides the assurance that would usually come from a personal ontology, a personal understanding of the civilizational context of encounter. Instead, things have shifted with us, so that we live not within an understanding of our civilization, but simply an awareness of the rules of the game that must be played to survive. Adorno described it as being like a grand hotel, an existence that demands a different skillset than a more artisanal existence might require. (His opponents derided this notion as "the Grand Hotel Abyss.") To gain more wealth, a certain lassitude and viciousness is required; this is how people are conditioned to behave, and they are rewarded appropriately. So, the holiday makes perfect sense in this context -- a celebration within a culture that already sees itself as an ongoing party. (I've always disliked parties. Never really understood the spirit of them.)
The subsequent festival, though, if it is to come to pass in the days following (in the octave, perhaps), presents a different proposition. These are the days which, for Holderlin, gods and men commingled, and came to understand their particular destinies in relation to each other. We can understand this as living life in a quotidian sense in light of the highest truths, as opposed to the principles of convenience and rewarded behavior. (The language of divinity frequently bears relation to the relationship of humans to their ideas. Compare, for example, early modern philosophers' views of Christ's human and divine nature with their understanding of how ideas and empirical reality relate in our awareness. The assertion of divinity logically entails the legitimacy of ideas.)
So, then, the battle-scarred and weary fellow outside of his society's charms isn't buoyed along by the celebrations of society. The permissive spirit and lassitude of the holiday in fact can inspire a sort of revulsion, and this is perhaps where many lose the plot. When the society around us seems to have gone even deeper into its non-rational exuberance and frolicking, perhaps it is best simply to register the change, like noticing the sky somehow darkening before dawn. (The stage directions in Parsifal indicate that the lights are to dim generally before the appearance of the Grail.)
We see a change in the people around us, and understand that the time of gods and men walking together for a bit have drawn near again, which at least entails living in the light of our highest ideas for a short time. In the festival, there is truth. And then the times will return to their own nature, and will fulfill their purposes according to their own character. Mysterious wars, and the meaningless froth of the culture. And the fellow outside the charms of the place knows exactly what those days will mean for him.
Nonetheless, the festival has come. Χριστὸς ἀνέστη.