Yesterday was a public holiday here, Ascension day. It's one
in a long list of Christian holidays which I had never heard
of in my life before moving to Europe. Also in this list are
All Saint's Day, Epiphany, Reformation Day, and Whit Monday.
It made me realise how incredibly watered-down religion is in
Australia (maybe in the Anglosphere in general?). I'm sure there
are people in Australia who observe these days, but they certainly
do not feature prominently in the public consciousness. Easter and
Christmas are the whole shebang when it comes to religious holidays.
I even attended an overtly religious high school and have no memory
of these days being recognised. Maybe some of them are specific
to certain denominations? I mean, obviously Reformation Day is.
I don't even know what denomination was my school was supposed to be,
if anything. Amongst all the hymns and services, that never came up.
It was just generic, unspecified Christianity. At the time I didn't
even question this.
It's not just the surprise holidays, though. All my Finnish friends
had "confirmations", a kind of second baptism which happens at
adolescence, something else I never heard of in Australia. I *was*
baptised, and so was my wife, but my parents have explained to me
that this was kind of a trendy thing for parents to do in the 80s
(which seems weird to me). Apparently the general consensus was
still that once is enough, though. Confirmations are such a thing
in many European countries that you can find "happy confirmation"
cards as easily as "happy birthday" ones. One of my friends also
explained to me that the day she turned 18 and had the freedom to
do so, she unenrolled from the Finnish national church (I guess
this was an opt-in decision by her parents when she was born).
That wasn't just a symbolic gesture, by being enrolled you have to
pay an additional 1-2% on your income tax to help fund the church.
If you opt out because you don't want to do that, I think you lose
the right to get married in a church building by a priest.
Come to think of it, maybe this is a lot less about how much genuine
religious belief plays a role in people's lives and more to do with
the extent to which separation of church and state is an explicit
government principle. In fact, it must be that, considering that
religious conviction in the US is certainly higher than anywhere
else I've lived, but not even Easter warrants a public holiday there.
It's kind of surprising, the extent to which a detail like that can
keep an institution so very visible even when its actual importance
has atrophied substantially (which it clearly has, Wikipedia has a
table with the percentage of residents of each European country who
answered "yes" to "Is religion important in your daily life?" in
a 2008-2009 poll, and in no country I've lived is that percentage
above 50%, and in the Nordics it's well below, 28% in Finland and
17% in Sweden).
Anyway, we didn't really do anything special with the holiday,
certainly didn't ascend. We had both been feeling generally worn
out and sleep deprived in the lead up due to various other things
going on in life, and so we took the opportunity to have a bit of a
lay in and generally took it very easy. We took a nice walk along
the river in the evening and took lots of photos of wildflowers.
I might write more about that tomorrow.
