Walt Disney World has been open for 50 years! Of course, the Disney Company is using it as a reason to celebrate—whatever entices people to visit the resort! There are new rides, new shows, 50 character statues, and 150 new food offerings, to name a few things.
We celebrate many different occasions—birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, retirements, holidays. So I’m sure nobody is going to bat an eye that WDW is celebrating its 50th anniversary. I would like to talk through a bit of why we celebrate. The late philosopher Joseph Pieper devotes a significant section of his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture to this topic. He says that “celebration…is man’s affirmation of the universe and his experiencing the world in an aspect other than its everyday one…The most festive festival it is possible to celebrate is divine worship” (65). That might strike us as odd. Like when do I ever celebrate due to worship that I have just given? We might allow this assertion for things like Christmas (literally “Christ’s Mass”) and Easter. Those celebrations are certainly religious both in origin and practice. But Pieper’s point is that we truly engage in leisure and recreation (the act of being re-created) when we have engaged in the highest activity on Earth that we can participate in—worship. Birthdays are fine to celebrate on the natural level (especially in thanksgiving to God for the gift of life), but Baptisms (and their anniversaries) are more worthy of celebrating, because it is then that we became children of God. We celebrate weddings (and my case, Ordinations) chiefly because of the liturgical acts that have preceeded the receptions. Many of the other holidays—like St. Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and New Years Day—all have religious significance. Some more recent attempts to institute secular holidays (like Labor Day) just don’t carry the same celebratory depth. But that doesn’t stop Christians from finding a way to worship; for example, Catholics have particular readings and prayers for Labor Day Mass. So what would make the WDW 50th Anniversary celebration more festive? Ultimately, it would be providing greater access to worship. As I have detailed before, worship services are provided at the Contemporary Resort on Christmas and Easter. Also, Mary Queen of the Universe Shrine (which offers several Sunday Masses) is close to WDW. The Catholic Church is familiar with year-long celebrations. Currently Pope Francis has us in the Year of St. Joseph. Other recent celebrations have included the Year of Mercy and the Year of Jubilee. There are official Masses for opening and closing the celebrations. And then there are special ways to enter into celebration throughout the year. Disney already has opening and closing celebrations, but to make it more festive, it would be best tied to a liturgical celebration. I admit it doesn’t sound like a realistic goal for most secular companies, but it's worth thinking about when we ask ourselves, “How could this be an even greater celebration?”
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