St Patrick’s Day
March 19th, 2009 | by Matthew Smith |Being a father of very young children, I don’t get out to party much which is probably why I didn’t even notice St Patrick’s day come and go this week. On having a quick read of the wikipedia page on St Patrick’s day I noticed a paragraph quoting a priest who feels that St Patrick’s day has become too secular. I suppose I can bear testimony to that, I had completely forgotten that the day had any religious significance at all – it has always been an excuse for a good old Australian piss-up as far as I knew.
This reminds me of an article in Eureka Street this week on secularisation of Christian festivals. In Why Good Friday should not be gambled, Andrew Hamilton argues that secularisation of Christian holidays is natural for a society that increasingly moves away from Christianity and religion. He thinks that the only hope of preserving Good Friday is as a historical holiday more like Anzac day. He makes a good point that earlier Christians didn’t have public holidays for their festivals and that:
Jesus was put to death on a weekday. The soldiers who did the job gambled their time away. He was killed shortly after he challenged the commercialisation of the Temple and the corporatisation of religious faith. His trial and executions were the day’s public entertainment.
It’s interesting to note that St Patrick was a missionary in a pagan society. He didn’t have a public holiday in which to deliver his message to the people of Ireland. He is celebrated there as someone who moved amongst the people and lead from amongst them rather than dominating and standing above.
2 Responses to “St Patrick’s Day”
By Andrew on Mar 20, 2009 | Reply
How about we eradicate public holidays for Christian holy days? Christians can take annual leave (or some other negotiate allowance) if they wish to observe the religious festival. Public holidays should be secular days, if we are in a secular country. And we are.
By Matthew Smith on Mar 20, 2009 | Reply
I’ve had the same thoughts about Christmas, in some ways it would be liberating to separate the cultural festivities from the religious observance but the two are still intertwined – maybe not so for Easter.