Holidays (Holy Days)

I met last week two Iraqis at a computer training course. They told me I could tell they were Iraqis by the shape of their noses and the bombs in their pockets. I told them I was setting up an online publishing house, Sargon Press. I suddenly remembered they were from King Sargon's homeland. Did they, well, know about him? The white one drew a blank. The dark one said yes, he knew about Sargon, King of the Assyrians.

He is an Assyrian,
said the white one knowingly.

I took pains to explain that the Assyrian King Sargon lived over a thousand years later.

I had thought that they would be filled with childhood lessons about their mighty Akkadian King.
He was the first King to found a Middle Eastern Empire — the embryo of the national state, Iraq.
But the gentlemen had never heard of that illustrious King.

A facile view would say that would be as surprising as two Englishmen having never heard of Queen Elizabeth – but one had heard of Elizabeth Taylor. That, of course, could happen but I don't think from people over fifty.

That got me thinking how historical memory does not follow any natural and inevitable linear path. Your comprehension of a past before your own is shaped by the conditions and the obsessions of your own times. Even your idiosyncratic historical interests are determined less by actual events than by your own inner needs and desires.
At a crushing New Zealand school I had taken to the Classics with the same rebel pleasure earlier English school boys had abandoned their Classics for modern or futuristic adventure stories.

The Iraqis knew nothing about the Akkadian King because his age predated the Muslim culture. No doubt in Saddam Hussein's Iraq they had been schooled in the mighty Assyrian and Babylonian conquests of Israel and Jerusalem. Saddam may also have boosted the Iraqi ego with the Western-discovered history that Iraq was the world's first literate civilisation. But in militaristic Iraq that would be "soft" history to be known about but its implications not explored.

So as the objective national past is a chimera, how can we find out what past shapes a country and a culture? I suggest a very accurate barometer is the national holidays. When a State imposes a public holiday, it at least must be convinced of its importance. Its' language, through which it names its holiday, tells us its' perspective on that historical time. If other groups within the State seize on the holiday for public protest and give it other names, that tells us very well the cultural fault-lines.

Nearly every country on the globe has an independence day. It celebrates the moment the present State ideology and structure won supreme control. The white Commonwealth countries uniquely do not. An Indian boy in China asked me what is New Zealand's Independence Day. I explained in New Zealand the invaders won. Israel of course has its Independence day. The following week the Israeli Arabs and their Knesset Members lament their unofficial Al Nakba Day, Catastrophe Day. That fault line is a witch's circle around every Israeli.

I thought back on New Zealand's holidays. An intelligent outsider studying the list might draw this summary about New Zealand society. Its biggest and most tranquil secular religious holiday is Anzac Day. That is a military day, yet no martial victories are celebrated. That suggests New Zealanders exalt the martial spirit but are ambivalent or suspicious about victory's spoils.

The actual spirit and belief systems of the boys who fought in foreign wars means a great deal to New Zealanders. The boys most likely departed for a Government-paid foreign holiday. But in the New Zealand way so unexpressed, they fought for the right of individual freedom and democratic government. It says so in every New Zealand town. So long as that holiday is celebrated and the memorials are kept no politician or ideologue would win a following pledging to take them away.

New Zealand also has national days unknown anywhere else – Province Days. There have been public attempts to remove them as archaic. But public opinion keeps them as an unarticulated reminder that the provincial democratic spirit – not a King nor a Party – mostly built modern New Zealand. The contemporary public glee about the woes of Telecom reveal that the public have not forgotten that it was their forebears in lonely valleys and raw towns that laid the telephone infrastructure.

In Haiti most holidays are Catholic days. Their biggest secular religious holiday celebrates the death of their greatest Emperor. America has holidays celebrating the births of Washington and Martin Luther King. In Haiti it is curious they celebrate a death and not a birth. That tells us quite a lot about Haitian history. Their great Emperor returned the black Haitians to field servitude. Therefore it is fitting in the land of Voodoo and the black revolution that an imperial death, not a birth, should be celebrated.

In America the rule seems to be: the white patriots celebrate Washington day, the blacks and liberals King day. The American Hispanics celebrate the holidays of their former homelands. The American Indians celebrate no secular holidays.

In France their biggest secular national holiday is Bastille Day. So long as the English language reigns supreme, they will celebrate that gaol-break.

In Germany they have two major holidays one day apart, Martin Luther Day and All Saints Day. it seems all German States celebrate one of them but never both. They are the battle lines of the religious Thirty Year War. There was also a religious secular holiday celebrated last century in Germany that most Germans would rather forget. April 20 for a decade celebrated with huge parades the birth of their living Chancellor. That is indeed remarkable that the national celebration of the birth of a living person happened in the mid-twentieth century in the heart of Europe.

In the white commonwealth countries, the Queen's birthday is a national holiday. But that is not her real birthday. It celebrates her grandfather's birthday, and therefore the spirit of the Windsors and the imperial legacy. Not exclusively the modest person at present on the English throne.

Her actual birthday is April 21 and it has been, until this year, a curiously hidden public event. This year on her eightieth, its proximity to the German Chancellor's has been forgiven. Her loyal subjects in their millions came out rejoicing.

The day before, there was a striking event that cannot be explained away as an English custom. The day before her birthday, Buckingham Palace celebrated a Royal event of all her subjects who share the Queen's real birthday. The theme of the festivity was solemnly announced as a Celebration of Birthdays.