Anzac Day - A Precious Day or a Day That's a Bit Precious?

Anzac Day has passed for another year. I heard a comment, without giving credit to the wrong person I think it was Victorian Governor Chernov, that said 'Anzac Day is a precious day', isn't that a wonderful statement?

It troubles me though that we spend a few hours in quiet dignity and contemplation observing this 'precious' day but then it's 'open the shops' or 'let's get to the movies' or whatever else we can find to do for 'fun'. We seem so incapable of simply taking one 24 hour period and stopping to contemplate, to honor to take in what it's all about.

As a pacifist I went through my years of being hostile and dismissive about Anzac Day.Then one day i heard the author Patsy Adam-Smith talking about why she wrote her book 'The Anzacs' and I realised how important it all was. It is a commemoration of the spirit of those people who did go and fight and kill and represent the rest of us but the doing of that reminds us of the futility of war and the need for peace. Heavens above Gallipoli was a failure, a loss if you will and we are great friends with the country we fought on those fields - what could be more of a testament to how ludicrous war is? Those wonderful words of Kamal Ataturk about the sons of Australian mothers being Turkey's sons also is further testament.

So let's honor those people, this day, honor all of us who remain and most of all honor peace by living peacefully for that one day of the year.

BE!

Religious holidays in a secular society - tradition maintained or just an excuse for maintaining the tradition of the long weekend ?

Whilst several cathedrals distant from being a Christian fundamentalist I am, happily, fundamentally Christian. I was brought up, and remain comfortably, a Catholic. It is the faith that I am most comfortable with and agree with its interpretation of the words and acts of Jesus and the Holy Trinity; I am though neither an absolute adherent nor follower of the rules, teachings and actions of the establishment or ‘church’. I find some of the dictates of the (mainly) men of the church often abhorrent and far too regularly ‘un Christian’, homosexuality, contraception (condoms, not so upset by views on the pill), celibacy, exclusion of women in the clergy particularly offend me.

I have huge respect for faiths outside the Christian community, mainly the Abrahamic ones but also Buddhism and Daoism. I even give kudos to Atheism, although misguided (and some like Richard Dawkins enormously amusing and tremendously frustrating in his sneering dismissiveness and snide personal attacks)I see ‘non belief’ as a very strong faith ironically. I often ponder on the staggering fact that there are 23 million Atheists in the United States (2008 figure) and possibly 10 times that amount worldwide – imagine what a different political system there would be in America if those ‘voices’ were heard? 

All of this is simply to give a bit of background on my credentials for today’s ‘Easter’ post and to eliminate the ‘oh he would say that wouldn’t he? He’s a Catholic/Christian so he’s biased…’criticism.

I wonder why we still think it is appropriate, even decent, to take a public holiday on religious, Christian festivals. We are kidding ourselves if we profess to be a country of observant religious and even more so if we cling on to believing we are a ‘Christian’ country. The Census figures record a small percentage claim to be religious and a smaller one where people declare themselves to be Christian. In light of this as well as our own daily experiences in workplaces and at social events where the subject of religion might be raised must seriously question how we can justify having a long break for Easter and two days off at Christmas. It is simply a farce and worse hypocrisy.

As I said I don’t mind at all if someone is an Atheist or agnostic or some other flavour of religion besides Christian. What I do mind is that a person can be sincere in their agnosticism or atheism but not sincere enough to say ‘I will not take a day off that celebrates the birth of a man I don’t recognize as the son of a god I don’t believe in let alone when he was crucified and supposedly arose from the dead before ascending into the sky to some superstitious concept of an afterlife or holy ever after’. Is it just easier to take the long weekend? What ever happened to conviction? Or is an atheist so used to not being committed to a faith or a belief system (as I say I really do see non belief as requiring a strong faith) that they can’t be fagged standing up for their ideals and say ‘no thanks’.

Alright so I sense the swingeing ‘well of course we’ll take the days off if they are there, it’s traditional and besides why should the bible bashers get time off and not me?’ Well how about because it is their beliefs and you are usually very vocal and dismissive about them?

I do have an alternative idea as a solution though because I am a staunch work/life balance advocate and believe these convenient breaks are very healthy.

I propose a week is added to our annual leave in exchange for Easter and Christmas public holidays cease to be mandated as holidays. People who identify themselves as Christians can nominate to have those days off still and would be granted them without question. For followers of other faiths would similarly be entitled to take their holy or observant days without question. Non religious are then free to take their extra days at other times in the year, perhaps just added to their annual leave break etc. This would also mean that shops and businesses would operate on the removed days but would not be able to oblige any employees to work on their nominated religious days provided they have ‘registered’ themselves as observant. There would be no silly regulations about someone having to be a church goer etc to identify as religious, it would be an honor system mostly, after all the only benefit to them is that they can have the religious holidays, everyone would be getting the same amount of days off, some would simply be taking holidays in recognition of their beliefs.

If businesses were to operate on these former public holidays (and remember all other public holidays would remain [although maybe Republicans might like to forgo the Queens Birthday holiday]), we could forgo penalty rates and loadings for working on those days. In the days of 24/7 businesses it must be time to consider being paid a loading simply because you choose to work outside 9-5 Mon-Fri to be, well, silly. Of course anyone working outside their own ‘normal’ hours should be compensated but not when it is you regular scheduled hours.

So there it is, time for some hard thinking and perhaps standing up for our beliefs…whatever they are. Some might say it’s the mark of a mature society!