Cracker: Hot Cross Words
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Indeed, Martin. You know, the idea of a pluralistic society where anyone would question why we all should honour Christian religious festivals thanks to, effectively, a historical accident is really fucking appalling. Just because I'm a devout Catholic doesn't mean you should have to be.
It does raise the question of, if public holidays were to be tokenised, as has been suggested, which of the current ones would people take?
I would still probably take easter, as it makes a long enough weekend to leave town, but I wouldn't give two hoots about queens birthday. Christmas and New Years would be 100% holiday, as I spent it with my family. Labour Day, Waitangi Day, I might betray my side of the political spectrum and trade them in for a more convenient time.
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It kills community and I love the way everywhere here in Asia, and across much of Europe & in places like NYC, community thrives, people communicate and life bubbles until late around shops, cafes and the streets.
I was fascinated by that in NYC. I arrived there at about 7pm, went shopping for three hours after checking in at the hotel, and had a wonderous dinner at 11pm. Then went on a bus tour at midnight. When we went home at 2pm the streets were still packed.
It makes our night life look about 10 steps back on the evolutionary scale.
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life bubbles until late around shops, cafes and the streets
But... my house is so much more comfortable, and I can choose who I invite over. And I'm in charge of the music.
(This post has been brought to you by I Am Fucking Old and Pathetic, Incorporated.)
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Indeed, Martin. You know, the idea of a pluralistic society where anyone would question why we all should honour Christian religious festivals thanks to, effectively, a historical accident is really fucking appalling. Just because I'm a devout Catholic doesn't mean you should have to be.
But I hurl myself into Christmas without believing in its underlying religious narrative. I'm with Martin: I see a great part of the value in holidays being that we all take them together.
I'd like more holidays. Bring on a day off for Diwali!
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Except, Russell -the raison d'etre for a LOT of our stat holidays just no longer means we 'take them together' for any reason whatsoever.
They aint community holidays...I think that stat-days-off are in a state of flux- as are rather a lot of other matters we current generations (given that some of us have lived through WW1*) are re-examining-
*One of my mother's v. few surviving first cousins was born before the outbreak of WW1-
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I think we should move Easter to October or early November, and Christmas to the end of July, and Halloween to April. Would be better.
edit: Just in New Zealand I mean.
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Much though I wanted to throw myself into Melbourne Cup Day when I lived in Melbourne, inherently the whole idea of it, and what they chose to do on that day, just gave me the shits. I don't worship horse racing, or gambling, or dressing up to the nines and then getting rotten drunk and carrying on in public. "You gotta get into it mate! Woooo hoooo!" got old by the 20th time I'd heard it.
At least I got a day off. Would have been nicer if I'd had it on my annual leave instead. Would have been an extra day I could have seen my family back here in NZ each year.
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In the US (the part of it that I live in at least) they only have collective days off for secular holidays like the July 4th, Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Philosophically I think it's fair enough for a pluralist society as long as allowances are made for religious observance, but at the same time employment law in many US states are extremely anti-worker, and it's not an example I would like New Zealand to follow.
I'm with Martin. It's nice when everyone is off at the same time. It gives us a sense of community, and structures the calendar so that people's lives are lived along the same contours, and people can have something in common.
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Jake Pollock, Martin et al - "It's nice when everyone is off at the same time"-
this is fuckwittery. For very many reasons, this just never happens.
There is NO sense of community when the basis for some of stat holidays is a dying( christian) religion and very few of us are even interested in the bloody (word used advisedly) thing: we DO NOT live our lives in this wonderful archipelago 'along the same contours' and we all have - not much in common-
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Perhaps you could explain yourself, rather than insult us.
Anyway, as my first post implied, my experience living in a northern hemisphere country has demonstrated clearly that these festivals mark seasons, and the religious element is window dressing. We all know this of course, but celebrating halloween when all the leaves are red, Thanksgiving as autumn turns in winter, a midwinter feast at the end of December, and seeing the first rabbits hopping around a neighbourhood in bloom right around Easter time is a pretty strong demonstration of that. And these things effect everyone.
Hence my suggestion that we move the holidays to more appropriate seasons, because at the moment we have it arse-backwards.
I would have thought, as the member of this forum who's life seems to be most closely tied to seasonal cycles, and to a tightly-knit, small community, you would have some sympathy with this perspective.
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Matariki makes lots of sense to me, and I think it would pick up quite a following even voluntarily
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Jake Pollock- are you talking *at* me?
Then you know very little about Kai Tahu: I live in a very small community - and I am the only Kai Tahu living here. Over the years, and with lots of neighbourly support (we include Lativan/German/Irish
and USA people here), I have taught people to make umukai/haaki: Irish-descended & Jewish people how to be kaikaraka,kaikorero, and
these matters do tend to be part of the local festvities BUT-we make these festivities/occaisions around birthdays and funerals, around the 'new years', and if something especial has happened (hasnt been for a while-)
*we do not make them around the seasonal year: we just go do, and the catching & eating is its own thing. "First of Oysters" pertains to my family over the other side of the hill. Matariki I introduced (and less than half the settlement celebrate it.) People shoot deer - cool, could be a feast, or could just be someone quietly butchering the beast and packing it away in a freezer-
There are VERY FEW occaisions here when people have time off in common and when any of these periods occur during stat-holidays.
Do not mistake 'small community' with 'tightly knit." There are some 40 people making up the narrow residential community of Big O. There is probably 10x that number who feel a deep connection here.
'Tightly-knit' the people with the place are: 'tightly -knit' the people
resident and the people who love the place - nah, never happened, right from the time when Kati Wairaki were teaching my Kati Moki/Kati Ruahikihiki some of the empowerments for living & being south.Now, understanding this much more, why should I not call your "it's nice when everyone is off at the same time" fuckwittery? My intimate community living just has nothing to do with what you envision-
(for instance: one of my closest neighbours and friends, together with her offspring, cleared a *lot* of overgrown trees round my place this weekend. Arthritis limits what I can do: I do not count on my friends - but they will do & help. Then we celebrated with good wine, cheese & nibbles, yesterday, and a little whisky this evening.)
This is living.
Celebrations will come at Matariki when this paticular segment of the OFR will hold our bonfires, feasts, and fireworks-
this time, Jake Pollock, is NOT official: while I agree (and have argued, for over 30 years,) that current stat holidays are out of sync with the year-round in Aotearoa-ANZ, there is no movement to
change the stat.holidays with seasonally-based holidays at all.And so, in the meantime, I find your comments out of touch and current reality. There are no 'lives ..lived along the same contours' to any archipelago-wide extent: there is not any generality wherein/whereby "people...have something in common."
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I apologise Islander. I was presumptuous, and I don't know all that much about Kai Tahu, and nothing more about Big O than what you've said about it at PAS. However:
My intimate community living just has nothing to do with what you envision-
(for instance: one of my closest neighbours and friends, together with her offspring, cleared a *lot* of overgrown trees round my place this weekend. Arthritis limits what I can do: I do not count on my friends - but they will do & help. Then we celebrated with good wine, cheese & nibbles, yesterday, and a little whisky this evening.)Has a lot to do with what I envisioned. In urban ANZ, which is where the vast majority live, people are tied to working regimes that are heavily regulated by private enterprise and often impinge upon exactly this sort of time where people can assist their friends and families in these sorts of tasks, or simply enjoy one another's company. Statutory holidays create space for people to do things together, and, as you say, to live, outside of work, for more than two days a week. Without them, and with Ben's vision of everyone taking the days off when they want them, urban life becomes even more atomised.
I think that would be unfortunate. But yes, you're right that my thinking does not apply to the entire archipelago. My perspective has been shaped by my urban upbringing. But I don't think that makes it invalid.
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But... my house is so much more comfortable, and I can choose who I invite over. And I'm in charge of the music.
Oh, I can do that too, it's just I have the choice whether to do that or perhaps some nights wander outside, sit at a buzzing cafe and maybe buy a book @ 9pm on a Tuesday night, and its not a choice foisted on me by someone else deciding what hours I should live my life and what hours I should hide myself away.
I'm not arguing that everything should be open but precincts where the city is allowed / encouraged to move beyond the constraints of the 1950s would be nice.
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Simon, do you think that's partially a function of population size? I totally agree, most of my perceptions are colored by various cities I've been to that are lively at all times.
I can understand what people are saying about holidays bringing people together as a society. But my feeling is that there is no need to legislate to enforce some peculiar times that have been chosen rather arbitrarily for this. People are always brought together by the things they love and want to do. Music lovers take a day off for the Big Day Out. Churchgoers will meet on Sundays. Cricket lovers will go to tests. Gamblers go to the big races.
People who aren't into it are drawn in by others who are. It doesn't take a state sanctioned enforced day off to get people to socialize. It takes meaningful events. For me, stats ain't it, except Christmas, and that one only from long tradition. My wife has taught me to love Christmas again. It is a major event, that involves a lot of planning, and I choose to participate. I don't see that requiring everyone else for whom it means nothing to get into it.
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And so, in the meantime, I find your comments out of touch and current reality. There are no 'lives ..lived along the same contours' to any archipelago-wide extent: there is not any generality wherein/whereby "people...have something in common."
I think there are. I think most people are doing roughly the same things at Christmas in New Zealand.
Even for people who have no religious adherence, or non-Christian beliefs, Christmas is considered the end of the working year and the gateway to summer, and I'd think there's an element of family and feasting for most of us. There's a value in shared statutory holidays.
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I think there are. I think most people are doing roughly the same things at Christmas in New Zealand.
Well, apart from the police officers and doctors and nurses who are expected to be on call on Christmas Day. If anything, as Damian said in his OP, it's the ad hockery that irritates me more than anything -- anyone spare a thought for the gas jocks working on statutory holidays? Consistency may be hobgoblin of small minds, but in this case I think everyone would benefit from it on this issue. Shut down everything or let everyone make up their own minds. -- because I'd respectfully suggest very few places would want to open on Christmas Day anyway. Just as not every shop and business opens on the weekend because it doesn't make any sense for them to do so.
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There's a value in shared statutory holidays.
I agree - just not *all* the current ones.
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An ah-hah! moment - courtesy of Jake Pollock (thank you Jake.)
The rural - urban divide...especially if we throw small towns into the rural quarter.
Working years are different when the work is seasonally-based (whether farming, fishing, or tourism.) But - given the fact that the majority of ANZers live in cities - I'd have to agree that "__most__ people are doing roughly the same things at Christmas."
Just, rather a lot people arnt-
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I think the people who don't have anything to do with Christmas will be more likely to have come from somewhere that it is not a tradition, religion or not. People from somewhere Europe dominated will celebrate it.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Christmas, or any of the other stats, in terms of what they celebrate and the effect they have in bringing people together. But I still can't see why it needs laws to make it happen. People celebrate Christmas on Christmas day, because that's the day it's on. Quite a few Euros (my wife's family for instance) actually celebrate it on the day before, which is not a statutory holiday, and the laws make this rather inconvenient, because businesses are often frantic about making sure everything gets done before the enforced break, and they don't cut any slack on leaving early to celebrate the occasion the way that those people actually have traditionally celebrated it for centuries.
Poorer families sometimes actually do the main celebration after Christmas, because they want take advantage of all the sales, and have a merrier event, rather than one where their poverty is rubbed in their faces. But the 27th isn't a guaranteed day off, and you'd have to take precious annual leave out to have that kind of Christmas.
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Poorer families sometimes actually do the main celebration after Christmas, because they want take advantage of all the sales, and have a merrier event, rather than one where their poverty is rubbed in their faces.
Up to a point, Ben, but many of us bourgoise soft pedal the big Christmas because there are cheaper and less painful ways of wearing away your last nerve. Blame the recession, if you must, but my better half and I tend to take a break well after Christmas when the kids are back at school and you can socialise and travel without the drama.
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Shut down everything or let everyone make up their own minds.
And since there is no way to completely shut down hospitals, prisons and the police force (as examples), there is no point in public holidays?
You know, I never thought there were so many people (on this thread anyway) annoyed by public holidays. Lucky for you I'm not a dictator, or you'd really be suffering.
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You know, I never thought there were so many people (on this thread anyway) annoyed by public holidays. Lucky for you I'm not a dictator, or you'd really be suffering.
We will not rest until New Zealand has as many public holidays as Spain.
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Ummmm, how are "tokens for x days off during the year" any different to annual leave? Did I miss something or are you just arguing for zero public holidays and 5 weeks legislated annual leave?
And while the surchage does frustrate me - the people that charge on Sunday are just charlatans - a 15% surcharge in the restaurant world is just the reality of that business. Labour is a huge component of their cost, wearing a 50% increase in it one day is absolutely the difference between profitability and loss and believing a restaurant can plan it's labour cost allocations across a year is either naive or super-ambitious.
If you're a restaurateer faced with staying closed (because otherwise you're throwing money away), or opening with a surcharge I can see why they make the choices they do. -
There is NO sense of community when the basis for some of stat holidays is a dying( christian) religion and very few of us are even interested in the bloody (word used advisedly) thing
For starters, the basis for most of our religious stat holidays is as much heathen as Christian.
I have yet to meet any non-religious person who refuses to celebrate Xmas on 25 December because it's has a basis in religion, though I've met a family that celebrate Xmas at the winter solstice for seasonal purposes.
A lot of people, like myself, don't consider it, or Easter religious at all. Like Valentines, they're capitalist holidays as much as anything else, and I'm quite happy with that as long as I get something good :)
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