Once again this year, the same controversy hits the media and presents city councils with a headache. Should shops open for business on Easter Sunday?
And this year, as every year, two teams march out to bat, both with the utmost confidence and the clearest of good consciences. Garden shops in impoverished suburbs like Remuera bravely defy the legislation. Tourist meccas such as Wanaka and Queenstown cry foul and sledge the opposition.
While, on the other side, trade unions plead the cause of employees who need a break with their families, and churches ask plaintively for a little respect for their most sacred festival. We've seen it all before. Enforcement authorities are increasingly put in an impossible position. So what to do?
Some of us may remember the days when religion (the word means to bind) held us all in a vice-like grip. In my native Edinburgh, swings in public parks were actually padlocked to their uprights on Sundays. We had our own variants on that sort of restriction here. Maybe we're still recovering from such variants on religious corsetry.
That sort of repressive legislation makes no sense. On the other hand, social consensus in this country is rather solidly against those who would like to drive on the right hand side of the road. Traffic chaos and worse would ensue. The argument endlessly and vociferously put forward by the commercial brigade for freedom of choice has its limits, in other words. The final criterion is the common good. If we've any sense, we know that Dunedin absolutely needs a thriving business and commercial base. Its advocates, however, can be singularly one-eyed and a tad too strident at times. As I noticed at a recent city council hearing.
Most cultures come to consensus decisions not only about traffic regulations but about cultural chaos, though in our pluralistic society it has become a tad trickier. In Germany no tractor works the fields on a Sunday, and trucks keep right off the autobahns.
Most shops, too, remain closed.Germany is a fairly secular country, so this is not a decision imposed by religious fiat. It is simply regarded as sensible. People need a break. People relish a change of air.
Most cultures, in fact, relieve the monotony of the daily round with a syncopated rhythm of feasts and festivals. The rationale? There is more to life than work and shopping.
Nature, as we know, abhors a vacuum, and a headless consumerism has scuttled in where authentic spaces for R&R are voided. Is it time to initiate a wider discussion about what sort of roller-coaster we want to travel down each year? Anzac Day has still some traction left, as does Waitangi Day, indeed there are signs that awareness and appreciation for both are growing. In Dunedin the Winter Festival goes down a treat.
Dunedin's Film and Arts Festivals march from strength to strength. Matariki is entering our social consciousness, too. But if we compare our monochrome culture with that of other countries or with that of other historical eras, why are we such threadbare paupers when it comes to ritual and celebration?
Let's take a big breath and have another look at the way we tend to padlock up ritual and celebration in this country. Shop till you drop has diminishing returns. There are interesting correspondences, here, to the awareness that we need to widen our understanding of prosperity from that of narrow financial and economic indicators.
We need to compute in the value of leisure, of volunteer work, of community building, of a rich cultural environment. There is a strong public health argument about investing in healthy cities and communities, instead of just pouring more and more resource into the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
Societies, like traffic, benefit from being channelled. Double yellow lines save lives. Creative ritual spaces enhance lives. Some American poets imagine contemporary forms of the Sabbath, free of noise and bustle. What sort of societal rhythms would be beneficial to our young people, our pressured middle-agers, our seniors? How can we build into the year inventive spaces for mindfulness? How refreshing to be free of commercial advertising on TV last Easter Sunday! Let's broaden out this Easter debate. Time and space have a sacred quality, too important to be left to the self-interested lobbying of the commercial sector.
-Peter Matheson is a Dunedin historian and theologian.
