Tomorrow is a bank holiday in Ireland. All my life I've hated bank holidays-- well, at least since leaving school.
I hate the whole bank holiday atmosphere. Instead of reducing stress it just seems to increase it. Everything around you seems to be overloaded, crowded, groaning under the weight of the holiday-makers. Even if this doesn't directly affect you, even if you stay at home, the atmosphere still seeps in.
Public holidays are different. I like St. Patrick's Day and the new St. Bridget's Day because they're about something. Bank holidays have no soul, no personality.
Because I'm a social conservative, I've spent about fifteen years (if not more) complaining about the 24-hour society.
I'm beginning to realize this was me fooling myself all along. I actually like the 24-hour society. I like the idea of the "city that never sleeps". One of my favourite things about hotels is that there's always someone on reception, at any time of the day or night.
I hated Sundays, growing up in eighties Ireland. I hated the whole atmosphere. They were not joyous. They were desolate and depressing.
I do not fantasize about little Tuscan villages where everybody stops to have lunch together and life follows the rhythms of nature. I like cities.
I liked my experience of America where everything is open much longer than in Ireland and where shutting up shop isn't the solemn ritual it is here, requiring twenty announcements and increasingly dirty looks from the staff.
My least favourite part of Christmas is when everything closes and everybody retreats to their private worlds. I like the public aspect of Christmas.
Yes, I love difference and I hate sameness, that's true. But, even in a 24-hour society, there are still big differences between early morning, late night, and so on. Everything isn't open all the time.
G.K. Chesterton was not a Sabbatarian and was quite critical of Sabbatarianism, considering it puritanical. He also thought Sunday trading laws unfairly favoured big businesses. When I discovered this, it bothered me a bit and I thought it was one of the things I disagreed with Chesterton about. I've changed my mind.
This blog post is a confession, not an argument.
I won't have much internet access over the stupid bank holiday, so apologies if I don't respond to any comments right away.
I know we’ve had this exchange before, but the memory of Irish 80s Sundays brings a traumatic chill: the boredom, the torpor, the waiting, the opera on RTE 2!
ReplyDeleteVery reminiscent of "Every Day It's Like Sunday" by Morrissey. "Come, come, nuke-lear bombs..."
DeleteTest comment from Bruce Charlton!
ReplyDelete@M - Ah - It seems that the glitch preventing commenting has cured itself, so you don't need to do anything.
ReplyDeleteHope your bad morning improves...
Thank you! I appreciate you checking it for me!
DeleteMy original comment was to the effect that I too dislike the concept of a Bank holiday - when a public holiday ought to be a festival, and that festival ought to have some positive (at least nominal) public theme or purpose - as does Christmas or Easter.
ReplyDeleteWhen the egregious Blair government introduced May Day as a bank holiday it should have embraced the traditional bucolic associations - but was instead at first made a communistic "protest" kind of thing. But soon even that obsolete Old left materialistic pseudo-meaning was deleted. May Day became merely a negative thing, a not-working day.
One good thing about Newcastle University in my working time, was that May Day (when it was a working day) was celebrated by local sword dancing (rapper dancing) and madrigal singing in the quadrangle.
I found this little event almost ludicrously satisfying and inspiring.
Bruce