Publications
Partners
IT’S ALL behind us now, the media shock! horror! stories about the death toll on the roads (I always pull a wry smile: if you do some simple maths, you’ll see it’s not much different from the horrendous toll taken every day of the year); the tummy toll (southern hemisphere stomachs bloated by eating foods meant to sustain the frame through the deep heart of northern winter); the endless festive songs, like a torture weapon. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus on repeat...
(These songs were never a feature of my childhood Christmases. Christmas carols were de rigueur, and we kids sang ‘rude’ versions:
While shepherds washed their socks by night
All seated round the tub
A bar of Sunlight soap came down
And they began to scrub.
Or:
Good King Wenceslas looked out
In his pink pyjamas
Sliding down the bannisters
Eating bad bananas.)
And, of course, the terrible strain on the wallet:
City sidewalks, busy sidewalks
lined with advertising
It's the big retail season of Christmas
Children begging for each new thing
toys for mile after mile
and the mood of the season is clear:
Buy and sell (buy and sell)
Buy and sell (buy and sell)
It's Christmas time for consumers
Ching-a-ching (ching-a-ching)
Cash tills ring (cash tills ring)
Must we spend Christmas this way?
(By Erica Avery, to the tune of ‘Silver Bells’)
Christmas itself is, of course, a mishmash of ancient festivals. Christ probably wasn’t born in December (those shepherds watching their flocks by night give a clue: in late December, sheep would not have been grazing out on the hills) and Christmas was not celebrated widely until several hundred years past his era. There were a number of festivals in December like the Roman Saturnalia and the Day of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun, and of course the midwinter Germanic festival of Yule which all became jumbled together into a grand midwinter celebration. (Which is why quite a few Christian denominations and offshoots don’t celebrate Christmas, I am told.)
I rather like Christmas and its grand wintery traditions: the Christmas tree, the suety Christmas pud with its silver tickeys, red and green candles, carols by candlelight and all that. (If you don’t know what a tickey is, it’s what we originally put in the slot at a tickey box! I’m not old enough to have used tickeys, but they became part of my vocabulary through my parents.)
I’d rather do all these things at a meteorologically appropriate time of year: let’s say 21 June, the winter solstice, the longest night as the year turns and we start to head towards shorter nights and warmer days. It’s nice and frosty, even in South Africa: a good time for a log fire and a festive get-together of families and friends.
I had a wicked thought: why are our public holidays still tied to oddly spaced-out traditions? You get Christmas and New Year – which means, effectively, that the whole country goes on leave for at least a week (remember, every public holiday is worth a couple of billion rand in production), after having been in a giggly and non-productive mood for the two weeks following the hol on 16 December.
Then you have that ragged gallop through March, April and May: you’ve got a public holiday in March which sometimes slams up against the four-day weekend of Easter, while at other times Easter slides towards late April, where there’s another public holiday and 1 May lying in wait.
Lovely if you’re employed, but as a freelancer with deadlines to meet, a bit of a nightmare, as employed people take a handful of days off to earn two or three weeks of leave, so you can’t get hold of anyone…
There’s a day off in June, one in August and September and then ten weeks till the next one, the longest break in the year. We have 12 public holidays a year. (And by the way, how can you call these public holidays when it is no longer mandated that ALL employees get the day off, except emergency services? Retail chains are even open for part of Christmas Day now, the one day of the year that used to be sacrosanct.)
Wouldn’t it be sensible to space our public holidays neatly, so we all get a decent long weekend regularly, and people can choose from four potential holiday seasons, instead of all charging for the coast twice a year? How about making a four-day weekend four times a year: summer and winter solstice (that’s around 21 December and 21 June) and spring and autumn equinox (21 September and 21 March)? That’s eight public holidays.
We could either sprinkle the remaining four days around the year judiciously, or add them to the mandatory paid leave each employee is entitled to. (I’d never suggest that we have less in the way of holidays; I believe we all need time off for sanity’s sake.) People could use the ‘extras’ to discharge their religious obligations.
“Scrooge!” I can hear them chanting already. “Atheist! Pagan!” Okay, okay, I’m not really serious. It’s unlikely we’d ever be able to sell such a huge change to our citizens. But it would be great if we could think about rationalising holidays just a leetle teeny bit, so people get regular decent chunks instead of the current dribs and drabs.
(These songs were never a feature of my childhood Christmases. Christmas carols were de rigueur, and we kids sang ‘rude’ versions:
While shepherds washed their socks by night
All seated round the tub
A bar of Sunlight soap came down
And they began to scrub.
Or:
Good King Wenceslas looked out
In his pink pyjamas
Sliding down the bannisters
Eating bad bananas.)
And, of course, the terrible strain on the wallet:
City sidewalks, busy sidewalks
lined with advertising
It's the big retail season of Christmas
Children begging for each new thing
toys for mile after mile
and the mood of the season is clear:
Buy and sell (buy and sell)
Buy and sell (buy and sell)
It's Christmas time for consumers
Ching-a-ching (ching-a-ching)
Cash tills ring (cash tills ring)
Must we spend Christmas this way?
(By Erica Avery, to the tune of ‘Silver Bells’)
Christmas itself is, of course, a mishmash of ancient festivals. Christ probably wasn’t born in December (those shepherds watching their flocks by night give a clue: in late December, sheep would not have been grazing out on the hills) and Christmas was not celebrated widely until several hundred years past his era. There were a number of festivals in December like the Roman Saturnalia and the Day of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun, and of course the midwinter Germanic festival of Yule which all became jumbled together into a grand midwinter celebration. (Which is why quite a few Christian denominations and offshoots don’t celebrate Christmas, I am told.)
I rather like Christmas and its grand wintery traditions: the Christmas tree, the suety Christmas pud with its silver tickeys, red and green candles, carols by candlelight and all that. (If you don’t know what a tickey is, it’s what we originally put in the slot at a tickey box! I’m not old enough to have used tickeys, but they became part of my vocabulary through my parents.)
I’d rather do all these things at a meteorologically appropriate time of year: let’s say 21 June, the winter solstice, the longest night as the year turns and we start to head towards shorter nights and warmer days. It’s nice and frosty, even in South Africa: a good time for a log fire and a festive get-together of families and friends.
I had a wicked thought: why are our public holidays still tied to oddly spaced-out traditions? You get Christmas and New Year – which means, effectively, that the whole country goes on leave for at least a week (remember, every public holiday is worth a couple of billion rand in production), after having been in a giggly and non-productive mood for the two weeks following the hol on 16 December.
Then you have that ragged gallop through March, April and May: you’ve got a public holiday in March which sometimes slams up against the four-day weekend of Easter, while at other times Easter slides towards late April, where there’s another public holiday and 1 May lying in wait.
Lovely if you’re employed, but as a freelancer with deadlines to meet, a bit of a nightmare, as employed people take a handful of days off to earn two or three weeks of leave, so you can’t get hold of anyone…
There’s a day off in June, one in August and September and then ten weeks till the next one, the longest break in the year. We have 12 public holidays a year. (And by the way, how can you call these public holidays when it is no longer mandated that ALL employees get the day off, except emergency services? Retail chains are even open for part of Christmas Day now, the one day of the year that used to be sacrosanct.)
Wouldn’t it be sensible to space our public holidays neatly, so we all get a decent long weekend regularly, and people can choose from four potential holiday seasons, instead of all charging for the coast twice a year? How about making a four-day weekend four times a year: summer and winter solstice (that’s around 21 December and 21 June) and spring and autumn equinox (21 September and 21 March)? That’s eight public holidays.
We could either sprinkle the remaining four days around the year judiciously, or add them to the mandatory paid leave each employee is entitled to. (I’d never suggest that we have less in the way of holidays; I believe we all need time off for sanity’s sake.) People could use the ‘extras’ to discharge their religious obligations.
“Scrooge!” I can hear them chanting already. “Atheist! Pagan!” Okay, okay, I’m not really serious. It’s unlikely we’d ever be able to sell such a huge change to our citizens. But it would be great if we could think about rationalising holidays just a leetle teeny bit, so people get regular decent chunks instead of the current dribs and drabs.
