Why a holy day shouldn’t be a holiday

April 13, 2001

By Padraic P. McGuinness

Have a happy Easter.” You hear this kind of thing frequently and, of course, it is intended as general good wishes, but surely it amounts to an insult to large sections of the population. To Christians who (unlike some Anglicans)

believe that it represents the central mystery and tenet of their religion, it is an insult in that it trivialises the religious and emotional experience which they should be going through this weekend.

To the Orthodox churches it is an insult since to them it is not yet Easter. To those of non-Christian religion it is an insult since it suggests that they should be celebrating a religious festival which clashes with their faiths and elevates Christianity in a way which may well be distasteful to them. To old-fashioned religion-haters, like so many of those who believe that church and private schools should be forbidden, it is also an insult in that it still suggests that the Christian faith is central to our community. Only those who are totally indifferent to religion, in fact, or who believe that only Aborigines are entitled to sacred sites or tenets, think nothing of Easter at all except that it is an opportunity for a few days off work.

There are many similar forms of good wishes. You can be bidden to have a happy Christmas, happy Anzac Day (a contradiction in terms), St Patrick’s Day, or whatever. It is usually meaningless, other than in reference to that great Australian religious obsession, the day off work or the long weekend. Any genuine religious observance has been virtually removed from any of these holidays (a term which derives from holy day), and there might well be a good argument for matching their emptying out of religious significance with their abolition as holidays. Or, perhaps, evidence of church attendance might be required for eligibility for time off work.

There are a few remaining vestiges of holy day observances. There remain in most States some restrictions on opening hours for pubs, shops, cinemas and so on on Good Friday. It might be necessary to remind some people that this day commemorates in the Christian religion the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ, the most solemn day of the year. And Easter Sunday commemorates the belief in the resurrection into life of the dead Christ, symbolising the resurrection into eternal life promised to all the faithful, and so is the most joyous festival of the religion. Easter Sunday, where people take their religion seriously, is supposed to be a day of special observance and family rejoicing – in Russia, the Orthodox greet each other formally with “Christ is risen”.

The decoration of eggs and all the other symbols are part of the religious celebration, but also represent various signs of spring and fertility. This happened in the old world in part because Easter coincided with the pagan festivals of spring and rebirth after the cold of winter, so the association of rabbits with Easter is not unrelated to the breeding habits of that little beast. In our case, all this symbolic stuff is really nothing more than mass marketing since we are just about to enter winter. In effect, Easter becomes nothing more than another occasion for splurging on presents, taking holidays and getting killed on the roads.

Perhaps we should think about abolishing Easter. Most of us have already done that in the religious sense; we might as well also admit that there is no case for making it a holiday. When the Victorian Government proposed to allow cinemas to be open on Good Friday but to forbid the showing of that ancient piece of horror schlock The Exorcist, there was the predictable outcry from the irreligion brigade who cried censorship. But they did not ask to be allowed to go to work without penalty rates on the same day.

Let us be realistic. There is no way that the four-day long weekend early in autumn could ever be abolished. So why not be honest and admit that it has nothing to do with religion? Then we could finally take the logical step, long overdue in modern society, of fixing the date of the autumn long weekend, or whatever we wanted to call it, and divorcing it entirely from the lunar year on which the calculations of the movable feast of Easter are based. There are enormous difficulties imposed on schools, business and most other activities by the shifting dates of the Easter weekend.

This would allow everybody to enjoy the autumn long weekend, not just the nominal Christians of the Western persuasion. It has long been the case that the Eastern Orthodox Christians do not get holidays to celebrate the central tenet of their faith, nor do the Jews get special holidays for their high holy days and other festivals, nor do the Muslims, and so on. Those Christians who take Easter seriously do not worry about the fact that it is also a holiday, and those who do not would not care if the holiday were dissociated from the religious aspect.

In future, Good Friday should be a normal day of the year for all secular purposes. Everybody should be expected to work as normal, all the newspapers would follow normal schedules, pubs and restaurants should be open as normal, and so on. On the occasion every few years on which the Friday of the autumn long weekend coincided with Good Friday, that would be fine for the Christians. They could spend as much time in church as they liked. But in the other years they would have to make the same kind of arrangements as do the other faiths to perform their rituals. Strict observant Jews will not work on Saturdays; strict observant Christians can make the same kind of arrangements for Good Friday.

There has to be an accommodation between the demands of each religion and those of the non-observing part of the community. This requires mutual non-interference.