That poppy time of year

[pebblerocker]

It was Anzac Day this week and the entire town is a sea of paper poppies and plywood poppies and crocheted poppies. Poppies on trees and poppies on churches and poppies on kindergartens.

Outside a childcare centre I saw a noticeboard which said "In lieu of Anzac Day..." and I had to turn back and read it, because that is not a phrase one expects to see in these nationalistic times. Could it be that this particular childcare centre is run by people who thinks glorification of war is an inappropriate thing to teach small children? Perhaps they were planning a celebration of international friendship and co-operation in lieu of Anzac Day? No, it turned out to be a request for parents to bring in photos of soldier ancestors for the children to stick on a commemoration wall, written by someone who thought "in lieu of Anzac Day" was a fancy way to say "for Anzac Day".

Ten or fifteen years ago we didn't have this sort of nationalistic fervour. I remember when Anzac Day was just something old people did, people who had lived through wars, and newspaper columnists worried about the dwindling numbers attending dawn parades and whether the whole thing was about to die out. It's very strange how things have turned around.

Comments

[vilakins]

Do you think the big revival of it has been due to it being 100 years since? Part of it is probably also about us and Australia starting to be nations, and here anyway I've seen photos posted of the people who died, plus there've been memorials by each tree on Severn Street since before I came (probably 2014)*, and people at the cenotaph services seemed reverent about the dead rather than nationalistic.

* When I got here, I thought, "Wow, lots of traffic accidents on this street!" :-P

That said, we don't have a national day like many countries so maybe people want to make this one it.

[deploys poppy because has one]

[pebblerocker]

The centenary has been a big part of it, yes. Our town has had posters up in all the shop windows every year since the centenary began, each about a different soldier, most of whom have descendants still living in the town. The history is excellent; the atmosphere of the whole occasion is becoming more and more disturbing to me, though.