National Holidays

[Tagmatium Rules]

National Holidays - how do people feel about them?

 

I'm writing this on Guy Fawkes Night, which isn't actually a holiday (but this is kind of splitting hairs), but how do people feel about them?

 

This particular British holiday is possibly a very good example, especially after the recent V for Vendetta film. In some lights, the fact that some people are willing to take on the govenment - to the point of attempting to blow it up - in order to have religious freedom, speaks truths about the ruling class at the time.

 

In other ways, the same people can be viewed as traitors, etc, as they are attempting to undermine the current government.

 

Myself, I feel that Guy Fawkes was attempting to swap a Protestant bigot for a Catholic bigot in this respect, but I would honestly like to know how other nations (and people who inhabit those nations) view such holidays, especially if they are as contraversial as this one.

[Orioni]

I've never been much of a fan of nationalism. Since national holidays belong in that category, I'm inclined not to care too much about them either. Why celebrate the differences between people, when it would be better to emphasize how alike we all are? There's always a nice piece of history attached to such days, at least for one party. And some countries have too many national holidays. For Belgium I can count at least four: Belgian holiday (21 july), Flemish community holiday (11 july), French community holiday (27 september), German community holiday (15 november).

 

I see the UK is even considering a British Day.

[Tagmatium Rules]

I under stand what you mean, and do totally agree. I think the "British Day" is kind of nationalistic, too. It's also ridiculously contrived and just sounds like another one of Brown's attempts to make the British public more patriotic so that we can blindly say yes to more and more of the damned "terror" laws him and his "Labour" government insist on attempting to push through. I kind of like the fact that a lot of our current national holidays have a fair bit of history behind them, even if it is obscure. The proposed dates for the "British Day", like the anniversary of Waterloo, Trafalgar or VE Day seem rather too jingoistic for my liking, and I'd definately rather Remembrance Day kept apart from that sort of thing. It's a day when we sit back and think about people who have been killed during WWI, WWII and all subsequent wars, not a time to celebrate the nation, even if we did win in those wars. The poor sods that got killed during them didn't win anything.

[Byzantium Nova]

6th December, Independence day in Finland. Lots of pathos and tradition.

 

I?m not that nationalistic but I?ve always liked it since it?s a holiday. (Having my name day at the same time may also be a reason for me liking it.)

 

Besides Finland turned 90 last december so there was at least something to celebrate.

[Orioni]

Today I coincidently read up on some Finish history. The Winter War and the later Lapland War are awesome feats.

[Byzantium Nova]

I do agree. At least winter war was a great success. My grandfather fought in Raatteentie incident at Suomussalmi and was wounded there by a grenade. He did recover, although some pain was left for the rest of his lifetime.

[Lahui]

To take this thread in a different direction, what are the Holidays of your own nation? I would assume that practically every nation would have a "founding" day of some sort, and perhaps of national "icons" - but would there be some unusual ones? Over here in the states, I'd count "Super Bowl Sunday" (Late January / Early February), as one, due to the number of parties (and hype of the teams - though most of the Super Bowls are snoozers, frankly). Or, to go back to Europe, I remember my time in Spain, with an unofficial holiday of Real Madrid - Barcelona (though I was too young to appreciate it).

[Lahui]

Meh - I forgot to add the obvious question - what are your nations holidays?