cross-posted from: https://retrofed.com/c/ask@piefed.social/p/2109773/what-are-your-ideas-for-public-holidays-that-can-be-celebrated-by-everybody
A lot of holidays are associated with religion and colonialism, but I think it would be a lot better if we had holidays that were universally recognised regardless of your beliefs.
Take my home country of Australia. You of course have the Christian originated holidays of Easter and Christmas, and Australia Day is awful (it’s pretty much celebrating the colonialism and slaughter of the indigenous peoples of Australia).
New Years should stay, it’s universally recognised for everybody using the Gregorian calendar, and memorial days for those who have died in war is also important to keep (like ANZAC day!), as well as the various independence days
Personally, I would propose the revival of the summer and winter solstices (the longest and shortest days of the year, reversed for the southern hemisphere), and May 8th as the new Australia Day (mate!)
What holidays do you think should be universally celebrated?
Solstices and equinoxes. And ideally the mid points between them. It’s been one of the best parts of my paganism to just feel in touch with the year as it goes by like that, but you don’t need to be pagan for it.
Baking some bread in early August because summer is halfway over is nice. Having a mid spring and Halloween bonfire is nice. Lighting candles for midwinter is great for the mental health in the gloomiest time of year.
Ironically, soltices and equinoxes don’t really matter in tropical countries are we are not affected much by them. I would still love to have those as holidays because why not.
I’ve always lived in 4 seasons land
and never thought about how wild it is that some fairly tropical ancient societies tracked the solstices and equinoxes…and apparently thought the Aztecs and Sumerians were tropical because the bias of habitable land towards the northern hemisphere continues to fuck with my mind as to just how intense it is. What the fuck do you mean only 4 countries even reach the southern temperate zone, and Australia only barely so. All of Europe, most of the US, and like half of China and the middle east are in the northern one…Yeah, the subtropics screw with my sense of temperature, weather, and time. The fact that 40% of people live in the tropics does dampen making global holidays of the solar events that are so significant to those of us temperate zone folks and are pretty noticeable to the semitropical folks even more than the fact that the Argentinians, South Africans, and Kiwis are celebrating the opposite ones of most temperate zoners. Or the fact that the Brazilians, Congolese, and Indonesians will be celebrating both in different parts of their country.
But yeah, I still do think it’s worth it because it celebrates the earth and its cycles and you can put local flair on it however you want to celebrate the way the global cycles apply to your area. And looking it up, two of the half season holidays correspond within a day to the start of the Wet/Dry seasons, so all the more reason to have all 8