Anzac Day on Monday

Today is Good Friday. On this day, apparently, Jesus Christ a jobbing woodworker from Bethlehem was publicly humiliated, tortured and nailed to a cross. He must have had a very different idea of what constitutes a good Friday than I do. If all that had happened to me I would have been hanging on the cross thinking "worst Friday ever". Still it could have been worse, at least it wasn't raining.

This year Easter has overlapped with Anzac Day thus merging one of the most important dates in the Christian calendar (unless you happen to be Orthodox or Coptic of course) with the most important secular holiday in Australia. The response of the Australian people was immediate and profound; "Woo hoo! Five day weekend".

OK that's not entirely fair, the churches will be full or at least fuller this weekend. There are the usual religious observances and a lot of people who aren't me will attend. There will also be the Anzac Day march on Monday which usually draws a huge crowd. I won't be going to that either although its a closer call than church. I'm a little ambivalent about the march, when I was younger I loved watching it on television. I watched all the bands stepping out and the veterans marching under their old unit banners. Now a lot of those veterans are gone of course, there are still representatives from the Korean War and a lot from Vietnam and later but even so I've watched the ranks drastically thin just in my lifetime. It might just be a coincidence but it seems that with the passing of so many former soldiers the nature of the march, or perhaps the people watching it has changed somewhat. More and more people are interested in Anzac Day and that's a good thing but there does seem to be a tendency to celebrate it. Anzac Day isn't a celebration, its a memorial.

Anzac Day is when we remember what these people did for us, and what it cost them; their lives, their health, their sanity. I'm not comfortable with partying or even smiling too much to be honest. I will cheerfully party and smile every other day of the year but not, perhaps, this one. Of course many people will march, or watch the march, in this spirit but I plan to be out of the city before the it starts.

I do plan to attend the dawn service because that really can't change. It is about remembrance, sacrifice and loss. That is the real meaning of Anzac Day and, it occurs to me, of Easter as well.