“A certain degree of attainable good must be kept before them. These holidays serve the purpose of keeping the minds of the slaves occupied with prospective pleasure, within the limits of slavery.”
-Frederick Douglass
Worth a read. Crazy to think this was only a few generations ago. The dude died in 1895, that was only ~20 years before my grandparents were born. Slave owners were able to hoard huge amounts of unearned wealth, through the disgusting practice of slavery, making money through another human's forced labor.
Just switch out [weekend] for [holiday] in the above quote…
There's absolutely no parallels to our “modern” society and what we're seeing, though. /s