A tiny Spanish village of Las Nieves annually hosts the bizarre Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme.
The festival is dedicated to those fortunate enough to have managed to cheat death and is known as the Festival of Near Death Experiences.
Those that take part are carried through open coffins and caskets through the town and have at some point during the year survived an event or illness that could, and according to them should, have killed them.
The procession of family and friends of the ‘celebrants’ makes its way through the streets of the town where they have to carry their ‘escapee’ in his or her own coffin. Even more surreal is the vision of those in the parade without family or friends who struggle along carrying their own coffin.
This unusual yet popular fiesta is considered by some international media as among the weirdest festivities in the world and is dedicated to Saint Marta de Ribarteme, allegedly the sister of Lazarus – who rose from the dead.
The event is taken very seriously by those involved, and church bells ring out with solemnity throughout the parade.
During the 19th-century there was a widespread fear, particularly in the US, about ‘body-snatching’.
And, for good reason.
Medical institutions routinely stole buried cadavers to demonstrate medical procedures to their enthusiastic students. Also, grave robbing became a problem after the American Civil War, when ‘body-snatchers’ started looking to pilfer riches and precious jewels off recently-buried corpses.
Fortunately, clever inventors had a solution.
In 1878 Philip K Clover of Columbus, Ohio, came up with a device that would ward off would-be body-snatchers. His device? An exploding coffin, which he called a ‘coffin-torpedo’. The device involved a system of triggers that detonated an explosion of lead balls if the coffin lid was opened after burial.
He went on to receive a patent for the device, which in his words, “shall successfully prevent the unauthorized resurrection of dead bodies”.
Despite the interest at the time in graveyard artillery, there is little to suggest that these coffin-torpedoes were widely manufactured or commercially successful.
“For the most part, these devices seem to have been used very little,” says anthropologist Dr Kate Meyers Emery.
“They were definitely oddities designed to make money off of the widespread fear about body snatching. The truth is, most of the time you really just needed someone to watch over your grave for a few days or weeks to make sure that the body had time to decay and wouldn’t be of use.”
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When we’re not working, we’re able to restore internal resources that we exhausted while dealing with the stress of work.
But not all time off refreshes us equally.
What is it about some holidays that make them so great, that we return to work feeling fully recharged and ready to be our most productive selves again?
Detachment
When experts are asked what the properties are of a really good holiday, in terms of returning to the office rejuvenated, they all jump on the same word first: detachment.
“The most important thing is detachment,” says Mina Westman, a professor of organisational behaviour at Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University. Detachment means letting go of work psychologically and not thinking about it, or at least not thinking about it negatively.
Detachment seems to work across the board. In studies, detachment was positively associated with employee well-being in both white- and blue-collar jobs and in many countries around the world, according to Charlotte Fritz, associate professor of industrial and organisational psychology at Portland State University.
But for many knowledge workers, detachment is easier said than done. In an era when staying in touch with work colleagues is easier than ever via apps like Skype, Viber and WhatsApp, some employees end up keeping in touch with the office even while on holiday. Checking in throughout a holiday lets employees manage unexpected problems and not get slammed with work upon return, which they may believe will make their return less stressful.
Sabine Sonnentag, professor of work and organisational psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany, says that “mentally detaching from work is crucial,” but added, “detachment is a means to recover and to restore.” She understands why people feel the need not to detach. “It might be better to check email once a day than constantly ruminate and worry about the emails that might have come in,” she explains.
Nevertheless, she still recommends limiting the amount of time during a holiday that one spends working or even thinking about work. “Feeling guilty because one is not working at the moment is detrimental, maybe more detrimental than working itself,” she said.
Relaxation, however you interpret it
Another attribute of time off that leaves workers feeling more fully recovered is relaxation. It may sound like common sense, but in the moment of planning a holiday, people don’t always prioritise relaxation. Family obligations, like visiting relatives, or designing a holiday that will be fun for the whole family, could leave you without any time to unwind. Don’t sacrifice everything you find relaxing about a holiday to please others.
Relaxation is a pretty subjective word, and Sonnentag said we need not interpret it as a passive activity. “Physical exercise can be highly beneficial for recovery,” she said.
Sonnentag also pointed out that because holidays are longer than other kinds of time off, such as weekends and evenings, they afford people the opportunity to do “more extensive outdoor activities.”
Westman gave a nod to physical activity being beneficial for recovery, too. If you find it relaxing to go on a five-kilometre walk while on holiday, don’t let anyone else talk you out of it.
Mastering a hobby
An unusual way you can increase your chances of having a rejuvenating holiday is to work on a hobby or activity that you’ve been trying to master. Mastery, which Fritz described in a paper she published with coauthors as “engaging in experiences that involved learning or broadening one’s horizons,” can be anything from painting to practicing jiu-jitsu.
Mastery has to do with building skills that are unrelated to our primary jobs, and while they’re sometimes assumed to be creative, they don’t have to be. Playing a musical instrument is just as valid as taking a language-learning class. Time off spent on a hobby or personal activity that improves with long-term and sustained practice helps us recover from work and may increase our ability to think outside the box and creatively solve problems at work, according to one study. So spending your holiday on a yoga retreat or going to dancing classes could have more benefits than you expected.
What not to do on holiday
In addition to not working, Fritz has discovered that “thinking about the negative aspects of your job during holidays has been associated with greater burnout, more health complaints, and lower job performance after holidays.”
Likewise dealing with “non-work hassles,” like getting a flat tire or arguing with family, has been shown to impede recovery during time off. While some non-work hassles are unavoidable, try to steer clear of locations and situations that you know might result in frustration, anger, or annoyance. If driving is a typical source of stress, for example, it might be better to plan your holiday around taxis, car services, and other forms of transportation.
So, what’s the ideal holiday?
While exactly what makes a holiday restorative varies from person to person, many experts do recommend taking more than one holiday a year. The reason has to do with a problem called holiday effect fade out. When we go on holiday, we rejuvenate, but the effects only last so long. Within three weeks of returning to work, employees are likely to be back to their normal levels of stress and burnout, according to a paper by Westman and a coauthor. The more holidays we take, the more total days of recovery effects we’ll feel, right?
What are you going to be doing on your next holiday?
