Josef Pieper[0] has written about leisure at length. What we call "rest" today is largely either idleness or recreation and something meant only to "recharge us" so that we can continue to work. But this is ass-backwards and not leisure. Leisure is what we work for and this was reflected, among other things, in the medieval culture of religious feasts. Our modern culture is a work-centric culture, but the middle ages were more of a leisure-centric culture.
To better understand what leisure is, Pieper points to the etymological roots of words like "school" (from the Greek word for "leisure") and points to the distinction between the liberal arts and the servile arts (the former are superior to the latter and what the latter exist to enable). By definition, work is for the sake of something; you don't work for work's sake. Our culture either worships work for its own sake (an absurdity and largely a neurotic distraction from our own nihilism) or it terminates with a preoccupation with consumption and indulgence of various appetites. A culture frustrated by a false materialistic/mechanistic anthropology will produce this kind of vulgar ethos.
To better understand what leisure is, Pieper points to the etymological roots of words like "school" (from the Greek word for "leisure") and points to the distinction between the liberal arts and the servile arts (the former are superior to the latter and what the latter exist to enable). By definition, work is for the sake of something; you don't work for work's sake. Our culture either worships work for its own sake (an absurdity and largely a neurotic distraction from our own nihilism) or it terminates with a preoccupation with consumption and indulgence of various appetites. A culture frustrated by a false materialistic/mechanistic anthropology will produce this kind of vulgar ethos.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/767958.Leisure