Last Tuesday was a public holiday, the first of three we celebrate in December. Being a Tuesday, many people took the opportunity to take Monday off too for what the Italians termed il Ponte dell’Immacolata.
Recently, one of our members of Parliament suggested that when a public holiday falls midweek, it should be transferred to the preceding Monday, thereby giving us a long weekend.
The honourable gentleman claimed that this would allow people to take more short holidays with their loved ones and also be good for the economy, particularly for business in Gozo since it would encourage internal tourism with more Maltese likely to cross over to Gozo over a long weekend. He clarified that he was excluding public holidays that commemorate religious feasts such as il-Kunċizzjoni, thereby basically leaving us with the four national feasts.
I have two observations to make about this: firstly, we have acquired the good habit of our Italian neighbours to ‘bridge’ a public holiday falling midweek thereby extending the long weekend to more than three days.
Hence, by transferring to the preceding Monday, we may actually be shortening a potential holiday in Gozo. Secondly, if it is important that we continue to celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, isn’t it also important that we continue to mark Republic Day on December 13? The argument is either valid for all public holidays or for none.
We have public holidays because those days are deemed so important as to allow us all a day of rest to spend with our families and friends. In my view, the day loses all significance when it is moved from its actual date. Just look at what happened to the feast of the Epiphany when it was moved from January 6 to the first Sunday after New Year’s Day. It more or less stopped being a special day.
Moreover, there is a limit to how much we should be asked to sacrifice in the interests of commerce. I give my modest and fair share in contributing towards the Gozitan economy.
However, our national holidays are not for sale or for hire. Shifting them for the sake of promoting business would reduce them and our national identity to being just another commodity.
Our public holidays narrate our history and point us towards the future. They say something about who we are. This is a nation deeply rooted in Christianity and taking pride in its having held fast to its own particular culture and identity despite centuries of foreign domination. Religion and culture are mingled together to the extent that the demarcation lines have been mostly lost over time. We can have no future without having had a past with all its glorious and tragic moments, as well as a present which we are in the process of shaping.
This is not to say that we should be held hostage to our past. Indeed we need to learn from history. When one looks at the situation in certain European countries, I start to wonder whether we have learnt our lessons at all.
The strong showing of the Front National in French regional elections last Saturday is worrying to say the least. We all know where extreme ideologies of both left and right led us in the last century. Yet parties of the extreme right seem to be on the rise in France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Poland to mention just a few.
We can have no future without having had a past with all its glorious and tragic moments, as well as a present which we are in the process of shaping
What is strange is that the Swedes and the Dutch for instance have always been regarded as liberal societies, not exactly the terrain where extreme right parties would rise so swiftly.
Fortunately, in Malta the two mainstream parties still command significant or almost total control over the electorate. Some would say that this is not fortunate at all because of the duopoly this creates. However, over the past decade, we have seen the two main parties practically aligned on major policies and, with few exceptions, not having to resort to extremist positions to secure votes.
Yet even our society is not spared of individuals or groups trying to push forward views that are not in tune with the mainstream. That is not to say that they have no right to uphold and express their views so long as they respect the fundamental rights and intrinsic human dignity of others.
In the US, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, last Monday called for barring all Muslims from entering the US. Recent opinion polls have Trump leading the Republican nomination contenders with 36 per cent, 20 per cent more than first runner-up Ted Cruz.
The fact that our history and culture are rooted in its Christian heritage, does not justify in any way using religion as a tool to categorise and curtail others in the exercise of their rights and freedoms.
The current threats to peace and security are not, in my view, religiously motivated. The perpetrators of the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris were not exactly what one would call pious Muslims. The biggest disservice to Islam is, unfortunately, being provided by Daesh with their caricature of Islam and the way the terrorist organisation manages to convince non-Muslims that Islam is the main cause of all the troubles we are currently facing.
As we approach Christmas we need to be reminded of its universal message of peace to all persons of goodwill. This does not mean that we need to de-Christianise the feast and be reduced to the ridiculous situation where we are even barred from using the very word itself.
Christian or not, the birth of Jesus Christ was an epoch changing moment because, irrespective of whether one believes that he is the Son of God or not, his message was a ground-breaking and passionate plea for men and women to discover their own inner goodness and that of others, all others.
The fact that over the centuries atrocities were carried out in his name, does not diminish in any way the validity ofhis message.
May this Christmas be a fresh opportunity for us to rediscover the inner beauty and goodness that every human life is imbued with in spite of all the cruelty and ugliness we see around us.