Getting Biblical in Daily Life
Jewish Perspective
Even though Ecclesiastes is now a classic of Jewish literature, there was originally some debate about letting it into the Bible. People were thinking of excluding it for the same reasons mentioned earlier: it simply seems to contradict other books of the Bible in major ways, and plenty of other parts of it were difficult and unclear besides. But it made it in. It was too much of a part of the classic tradition not to be let in—it was admired by a lot of people.
Ecclesiastes is one of the five books read on Jewish feast days, because its message about the fleeting nature and the vanity of life, and its recommendation to be merry, help put feasting and fun into context. It's a way of saying, "Let's remember to enjoy being together, because life is fragile."
For example, Ecclesiastes is read on the holiday of Sukkot—which is really more of a fun and festive holiday (as opposed to a serious one like Yom Kippur)—for the same reason, but also because during Sukkot people eat and sometimes camp-out in a flimsy huts built outside their houses. Ecclesiastes reminds us that we're living in a temporary world (a world of vanity), the same way people celebrating the holiday are living in temporary huts.
Also, belief in the resurrection of the dead was not so clean-cut back in ancient Israel, considering that the Torah itself never really mentions immortality. Certain Jewish groups, like the Sadducees, agreed with Ecclesiastes on the afterlife—they didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead, either. But there's a great tradition of debate—and even of skepticism—in the Jewish tradition. So hearing conflicting views, like those given by Ecclesiastes, aren't that big of a problem even for people who do take the Orthodox line, and believe in the resurrection.
Eastern Orthodox Perspective
Over 1500 years ago, the Eastern Orthodox Church Father, Gregory of Nyssa, recognized that Ecclesiastes poses a lot of problems for readers. It seems to contradict other parts of the Bible—it's dark and difficult. But in his view, this is what makes Ecclesiastes so great. Like Coldplay says, "Nobody said it was easy." (Granted, they also sang, "Nobody said it would be this hard.") Yet Gregory approaches Ecclesiastes like a "wrestling match" (his words).
Nyssa assumes you've warmed up with the Proverbs—King Solomon's easier, more conventional set of wise sayings. But Proverbs was mere kid stuff, but a tricycle compared to the Grand Canyon-jumping stunt-bike that is Ecclesiastes. When you get in the ring with Ecclesiastes, you need to really have your intellect pumped-up, with all your adrenaline flowing—its where all the deep doubts and contradictions that attack the hearts of believers are faced head-on. (Source)
Today, the Eastern Orthodoxy still approaches Ecclesiastes as a source of welcome difficulties. The website "Orthodox Answers"—maintained by an Orthodox Church in California—continues to wrestle with the book's profound problems. To provide an example: someone wrote into the site asking how the fact that Ecclesiastes doubts the afterlife can be reconciled with the rest of the Bible. The Orthodox Answer squad responded by saying that the Bible's revelation is progressive—meaning that it is more fully revealed over time. So, the Gospels and other books of the Bible help fill in the blanks that Ecclesiastes leaves open—resurrection and immortality being a perfect case in point.
Catholic Perspective
Ecclesiastes had a big influence on the way the Catholic Church talked about certain things. St. Augustine liked to use the word "vanity," and would speak about the vanity of the world in a way that would've fit Ecclesiastes himself. But for Augustine, there's an escape-hatch from the world's vanity: Jesus Christ. He urged the church to pray to "be brought out of prison, that is from this world, from under the sun, where all is vanity," directly echoing Ecclesiastes.
St. Jerome, another major Catholic figure, wrote about Ecclesiastes, comparing the passage, "There is nothing new under the sun" with the Roman playwright, Terrence, who wrote "Nothing has been said which has not been said before." (Source)
In the present day, Ecclesiastes continues to color the language of the Catholic Church. After being introduced by Bob Dylan—who played "Blowin' in the Wind" for him (yes, that actually happened)—Pope John Paul II said, "the answer to the questions of your life 'is blowing in the wind.' It's true! But not in the wind which blows everything away in empty whirls, but the wind which is the breath and voice of the Spirit, a voice that calls and says 'come!'" The "wind which blows everything away in empty whirls" sounds pretty close to what Ecclesiastes meant by vanity: "mere breath."
Lutheran Perspective
Martin Luther was a pretty intense Ecclesiastes fan. He admitted that it was obscure on some big questions, writing "The book is one which […] no one has ever completely mastered." But he also said that Ecclesiastes gives great advice, encouraging us to "happily enjoy the things that are present […] lest we permit the present moment, our moment, to slip away."
So, overall, the Lutheran perspective (or, at least, Martin Luther's personal perspective) on Ecclesiastes is positive—more positive than the opinion of the other big Protestant reformer, John Calvin, who we'll discuss in a second. (Source)
Reformed and Presbyterian Perspectives (Calvinism)
Unlike Luther, John Calvin never preached a single sermon on Ecclesiastes. He seems to have regarded it with distaste and suspicion—like it shouldn't have been in the Bible in the first place. In his sermons and writings, Calvin usually approaches it as a kind of counterpoint to Christianity. It's a book that exists to say things that are then utterly defeated by the New Testament. Calvin typically cites it to serve as a "straw man"—for instance, he beats up on Ecclesiastes's argument that humans and animals both are brought to life by one spirit (from God), insisting that humans alone have the spirit.
Yet, one of Calvin's interpreters, William P. Brown, says that the Protestant rebel and the ancient Jewish sage actually have more in common on certain points than Calvin is willing to admit. When Calvin talks about taking joy in work, for example, he makes some of the same points Ecclesiastes would've made—he just never bothers to mention that Ecclesiastes felt the same way. So… not one of his favorite people, we guess. (Source)
Jehovah's Witness Perspective
Ecclesiastes is important to the Jehovah's Witnesses for one big reason: soul sleep. Most Christian denominations believe that, after death, the saved will go to heaven, and the wicked will be damned to hell. But the Jehovah's Witnesses (and the Seventh Day Adventists, for that matter) believe that everyone will go into a state of "soul sleep," of unconsciousness.
On the Judgment Day, everyone who is saved will be awakened to live in the Kingdom of God—but rather than having everyone else get tossed into hell, the wicked will just be annihilated: they'll never wake up and they won't have any dreams. They'll simply be gone. The Jehovah's Witnesses find support for this view in Ecclesiastes, where it says that when the dead find themselves in the underworld, in Sheol, there will be "neither work, nor thought, nor knowledge" there (9:10). (Check out this site for more info.)
Humanist Perspectives
Given that the book of Ecclesiastes is probably the most skeptical book in the Bible, it's attracted a great deal of attention from people who see it as containing secular wisdom. The literary critic Matthew Arnold advocated reading the Bible as literature and poetry rather than as revelation—and he felt that he found deep thoughts in Ecclesiastes—maybe not as deep as Jack Handey's thoughts, but pretty deep.
He said it was "one of the wisest and worst understood books of the Bible", though he also thought it ran against the Bible's usual, positive message of hope. Also, the British revolutionary poet, Percy Shelley, thought the book of Ecclesiastes was pretty good—though he found it more somber and serious than hopeful, too.
But humanists have not always been fans, either. Thomas Paine—the Enlightenment philosopher and friend of the American Revolution—said that it was no surprise that King Solomon seemed so tired and depressed. (Paine, like everyone else at the time, believed Solomon was the same as Ecclesiastes.) Solomon, says Paine, had had over a thousand wives and concubines—so how could he have been happy with the company of so many women whom he himself had enslaved and made unhappy?
(It's sort of a tongue-in-cheek argument—maybe you had to be there to find it funny. It does show that Tom Paine was kind of an early feminist, though.) (Source)