I like the idea of a holiday set by the moon - connecting us back to the natural world that we’re otherwise flogging to death with climate change and biodiversity destruction.
But if we’re going to rearrange public holidays, here’s my suggestion: we want roughly one per month. A certain number of them should be common to all, because part of the joy of a public holiday is that everyone gets a day off at the same time. March/April are jammed with holidays at the moment. The religious have days that are holy to them.
So I’d keep New Year’s Day and Anzac Day where they are as common holidays. Move Christmas/Boxing Day closer to the summer solstice and call it mid summer, common to all.Allow Labour Day to vary between states as now (but also common to all). Make Reconcilliation Day (ACT) National. Bung in an Australia Day somewhere, more likely later in the year so there’s an even spread. And then allow everyone 5 days for their particular religious tradition or just to take when they want. And if the Victorian govt wants to have a holiday for boofheads kicking an oval ball or idiots whipping horses, they can trade off the lower productivity and the rest of the country can ignore them.
As I recall The medieval kerfuffle over the dates of Easter reinforced Roman connections of church power with money over Celtic monastic poverty (for ensuring the poor are fed rather than used to enrich bishops). And Ofc the eastern churches still go by different calcs. I’m all for change as long as we adopt the Celtic version. And the humility that went with it. And maybe move the Vatican to Belfast.
In logic, a secular republic (which Australia is not quite) should ignore religious festivals entirely. But Good Friday is a public holiday in Alsace and Lorraine, but not the rest of France,thanks to Napoleon III's Concordat of 1855 with the Pope, which of course remained in force while the region was annexed by Germany after 1870, against Bismarck's prescient advice. I have no idea why the whole of France has a bank holiday on August 15, the feast of the Blessed Virgin May and particularly associated with the ultramontane and incomprehensible Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Mind you, it`s a low-cost holiday as France basically takes August off and it's hard to tell the difference.
The only good reason for getting into fights on the archetypal lost causes of calendar reform is to annoy the bad guys. Zelensky did this by making the Ukrainian Orthodox Church switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, for Christmas as well as Easter. He even forced Putin to offer a truce over the despised Gregorian Easter. Since the truce is bogus, the points win is somewhat theoretical.
"The only good reason for getting into fights on the archetypal lost causes of calendar reform is to annoy the bad guys."
One of my half-serious political opinions is we should spend a lot more energy annoying the bad guys. The culture wars have been so devastating for the left because the right picks issues which they don't care about but which really matter to the left (e.g. trans rights, indigenous acknowledge). The apotheosis of this is the nihilism of the Trump camp, who don't give a shit about anything and so are essentially untouchable.
We should fight back by finding equally inconsequential issues which the right value, so they can spend enormous energy defending stuff that doesn't matter while we get on with the real issues. An obvious example in the US is the imperial units, but I can see holidays working well here. The right and the media would work themselves into a lather over the threat to our values, but not a single vote would change. It might create the space for action on climate, etc.
This is an easy reform technically, as the ancient College of Cardinals is a pragmatic piece of administrative machinery without biblical or SFIK other theological sanction. The rule that only ordained priests can be cardinals was promulgated as recently as 1917. The next Pope, if he really wants to, can change this so that women can be deacons and deacons can be cardinals, and then appoint a handful of distinguished senior Catholic women to the college,. He would not automatically get into the far more difficult question of the ordination of women as priests. Conservatives will object to this on feeble grounds of unripe time and slippery slope, but this will only show their isolation. Michelangelo’s powerful Sybils, looking down from the Sistine Chapel ceiling on the long procession of misogynist conclaves, would clap the long-due reform. https://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Prophets.html
While they are about it, the Sybils could also point the Vatican in the direction of modern methods of ranked-choice voting. These allow democracies like Ireland and Australia to process millions of votes in half the time it takes the 135 eligible cardinals to go through one round of manual voting. repeating one by one a pointless oath that they haven’t been bribed. Surely the sin would be accepting the bribe? Lying about it is inherent and doesn’t add to your decades in purgatory. Does the length of the penance really depend on the number of rounds of voting and ex hypothesi repetitions of the false oath?
Mind you, the cardinals are in one respect more modern than the US Senate and Supreme Court: they have an age limit of 80 for voting.
Jorge Bergoglio, aka as Pope Francis I, was a good man. RIP.
I like the idea of a holiday set by the moon - connecting us back to the natural world that we’re otherwise flogging to death with climate change and biodiversity destruction.
But if we’re going to rearrange public holidays, here’s my suggestion: we want roughly one per month. A certain number of them should be common to all, because part of the joy of a public holiday is that everyone gets a day off at the same time. March/April are jammed with holidays at the moment. The religious have days that are holy to them.
So I’d keep New Year’s Day and Anzac Day where they are as common holidays. Move Christmas/Boxing Day closer to the summer solstice and call it mid summer, common to all.Allow Labour Day to vary between states as now (but also common to all). Make Reconcilliation Day (ACT) National. Bung in an Australia Day somewhere, more likely later in the year so there’s an even spread. And then allow everyone 5 days for their particular religious tradition or just to take when they want. And if the Victorian govt wants to have a holiday for boofheads kicking an oval ball or idiots whipping horses, they can trade off the lower productivity and the rest of the country can ignore them.
Nice thoughts. But the Sunday after a full moon doesn’t cut if for me as a lunar holiday. How about one for the biggest supermoon of the year?
As I recall The medieval kerfuffle over the dates of Easter reinforced Roman connections of church power with money over Celtic monastic poverty (for ensuring the poor are fed rather than used to enrich bishops). And Ofc the eastern churches still go by different calcs. I’m all for change as long as we adopt the Celtic version. And the humility that went with it. And maybe move the Vatican to Belfast.
In logic, a secular republic (which Australia is not quite) should ignore religious festivals entirely. But Good Friday is a public holiday in Alsace and Lorraine, but not the rest of France,thanks to Napoleon III's Concordat of 1855 with the Pope, which of course remained in force while the region was annexed by Germany after 1870, against Bismarck's prescient advice. I have no idea why the whole of France has a bank holiday on August 15, the feast of the Blessed Virgin May and particularly associated with the ultramontane and incomprehensible Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Mind you, it`s a low-cost holiday as France basically takes August off and it's hard to tell the difference.
The only good reason for getting into fights on the archetypal lost causes of calendar reform is to annoy the bad guys. Zelensky did this by making the Ukrainian Orthodox Church switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, for Christmas as well as Easter. He even forced Putin to offer a truce over the despised Gregorian Easter. Since the truce is bogus, the points win is somewhat theoretical.
"The only good reason for getting into fights on the archetypal lost causes of calendar reform is to annoy the bad guys."
One of my half-serious political opinions is we should spend a lot more energy annoying the bad guys. The culture wars have been so devastating for the left because the right picks issues which they don't care about but which really matter to the left (e.g. trans rights, indigenous acknowledge). The apotheosis of this is the nihilism of the Trump camp, who don't give a shit about anything and so are essentially untouchable.
We should fight back by finding equally inconsequential issues which the right value, so they can spend enormous energy defending stuff that doesn't matter while we get on with the real issues. An obvious example in the US is the imperial units, but I can see holidays working well here. The right and the media would work themselves into a lather over the threat to our values, but not a single vote would change. It might create the space for action on climate, etc.
I quite like the madness of Easter's march through the months.
Of course, being retired, it doesn't matter even slightly to me – in every way that matters, every day is Sunday.
Too logical and sensible for our pollies, unfortunately, as usual.
If our host is going to pursue a lost religious cause, let me seasonably resuscitate one of mine: women cardinals. https://www.jameswimberley.es/Blog%20posts/2013/Reforming%20the%20Curia.htm
This is an easy reform technically, as the ancient College of Cardinals is a pragmatic piece of administrative machinery without biblical or SFIK other theological sanction. The rule that only ordained priests can be cardinals was promulgated as recently as 1917. The next Pope, if he really wants to, can change this so that women can be deacons and deacons can be cardinals, and then appoint a handful of distinguished senior Catholic women to the college,. He would not automatically get into the far more difficult question of the ordination of women as priests. Conservatives will object to this on feeble grounds of unripe time and slippery slope, but this will only show their isolation. Michelangelo’s powerful Sybils, looking down from the Sistine Chapel ceiling on the long procession of misogynist conclaves, would clap the long-due reform. https://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Prophets.html
While they are about it, the Sybils could also point the Vatican in the direction of modern methods of ranked-choice voting. These allow democracies like Ireland and Australia to process millions of votes in half the time it takes the 135 eligible cardinals to go through one round of manual voting. repeating one by one a pointless oath that they haven’t been bribed. Surely the sin would be accepting the bribe? Lying about it is inherent and doesn’t add to your decades in purgatory. Does the length of the penance really depend on the number of rounds of voting and ex hypothesi repetitions of the false oath?
Mind you, the cardinals are in one respect more modern than the US Senate and Supreme Court: they have an age limit of 80 for voting.
Jorge Bergoglio, aka as Pope Francis I, was a good man. RIP.