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| Subject: From a wasteland to anything goes Good FridayApril 6, 2012 | |
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Author: The Sydney Morning Herald |
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Date Posted: 10:35:25 04/05/12 Thu The Sydney Morning Herald National Health Education Investigations Environment The Diary Obituaries Multimedia Blog Central Readers' Editor You are here: Home National Article Search smh: Search in: smh.com.au smh.com.au Web From a wasteland to anything goes Damien Murphy April 6, 2012 Read later Ads by Google Royal Easter Show 2012 www.EasterShow.com.au Australia's best Easter festival! Find out what's on in 2012. Illustration: Cathy Wilcox THERE are noisy processions in the Philippines, India, Spain and Italy. They paint eggs in Poland, fly kites in Bermuda. Curiously, perhaps, it is not a public holiday in Ireland. For much of Australia's history, Good Friday joined Anzac Day morning and Boxing Day as pretend Sundays. Federation Australians went along with what was expected of them but hundreds of thousands of Australian baby boomers remember Good Fridays as a yawning 24-hour wasteland. Advertisement: Story continues below Little was allowed to stir. Shops were closed. Nothing loud, such as sport, was allowed. On transistor radios across the land, Top Ten music fell silent, replaced by dirges or classical music. Black-and-white television, too, adopted sackcloth and ashes: commercial stations in some states teased out the tedium with interminable 24-hour telethons for children's hospitals; at night, a commercial-free religious film was screened. Cecil B. De Mille's 1932 classic The Sign of the Cross was a regular. In keeping with convention, the face of Christ was never shown. For years, the film's most memorable scene, Claudette Colbert's bath in asses' milk, remained Good Friday's most exciting moments. Then there was the smoked cod, loved by few, loathed by many. The only way children (and most adults) could be made to eat the horrid-tasting yellow smoked fish was to smother it in white sauce. Fish consumption came out of millennium-old Catholic Church canon law about doing penance on Friday that somehow transmogrified into going without meat - a good way of saying sorry. Other Christian churches are happy to eat off the hoof on Fridays but confusion reigns among Catholic meat-eaters because of Vatican II's 1962 modernisation of practices - so fish remains on the Good Friday menu, courtesy of family tradition rather than church edict. When did Good Friday lose its potency? Probably some time in the late 1960s, courtesy of the closing of the great sectarian divide that split the churches in Australia. Good Friday had been a day when the various Christian churches shaped up against one another to show who was best. But Gary Bouma, an Anglican priest and emeritus professor of sociology at Monash University in Melbourne, says a shrinking world made many followers realise that they were more united than divided. Social changes helped too. The rise of rock music helped tear down some moral prohibitions on sex and drugs and made business aware that teenagers had money to spend. One consequence of that wealth was that teenagers found it easier than earlier generations to challenge the established order. The election of John F. Kennedy as US president helped the acceptance of Catholics in high office. ''Once you don't have to work so hard at being different, some traditions are the first things to go,'' Professor Bouma said. Despite the changes, echoes remain of those years. Commerce still lies comatose. Supermarkets remain closed, most cafes are shut and a drink of beer will be almost unobtainable. That will change. The state government has introduced legislation to allow retailers to trade on Boxing Day and open for restocking on Good Friday, Christmas Day, Easter Sunday and Anzac Day. Is this the end of Australia as a Christian nation? No, says Professor Bouma. ''That happened years ago. What's the matter with shops opening? I mean you allow the NRL to play Good Friday.'' The AFL is still holding out, but North Melbourne slotted a Good Friday practice session to alleviate fans' boredom. The Kangaroos' chief executive, Eugene Arocca, said the club mascot would hand out Easter eggs. Ads by Google Catholic Lent Charity caritas.org.au/Catholic-Lent-Appeal Support Project Compassion to help end poverty this Lent. Donate now! Has Your Fixed Income www.firstmac.com.au/highlivez Investment Achieved "Recommended" from Zenith Investment Partners? New Order of Mass books www.mirrabookapress.com.au Australian.Engaging.New responses. The Southern Cross Mass Book Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/from-a-wasteland-to-anything-goes-20120405-1wfo7.html#ixzz1rBihwMX6 [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |