In terms of exploiting the inherent avarice of children and subjecting the nation to a relentless retail bombardment, Easter has always been the poor relation of Christmas – the high-street boutique to Yuletide’s designer catwalk. Every child receives the same present at Easter, with the only difference being the brand of egg; unlike Christmas and its great divide between the have’s and have-not’s, every child is therefore uniquely equal, as though Easter had been hatched by a Soviet committee. Festivities span a handful of days and then it’s as you were again. If only December’s month-long consumerist tsunami could be over and done with as quickly. Easter is short, sweet and largely unobtrusive. In essence, the perfect break from the norm.
Although there must have been wet ones, childhood memories of Easter are inevitably soaked in sunshine. Sometimes, this meant the dreaded car journey to a caravan park or camp site, with the latter location very much dependent on the unreliable British climate as to whether or not the holiday was remembered for healthy outdoor activities or indoor boredom, re-reading the same issue of ‘Shiver and Shake’ over and over again whilst parents played cards. The height of spring that Easter represented would also usher in the summer sports like cricket, and the football season was winding down with the imminent Cup Final (as the FA Cup Final simply used to be referred to then) bringing the curtain down on the beautiful game until August.
In contrast to Christmas, TV schedules weren’t unduly drenched in seasonal-themed fare. Yes, there’d be the traditional morning repeats of children’s classics on BBC1, and there would tend to be a ‘Jesus movie’ airing at some point whilst news bulletins would be cut short to accommodate Billy Smart’s Circus; but there was no real genre of ‘Easter specials’ when it came to regular programmes. Sure, there’d be the obligatory ‘Disney Time’, a clips programme linked by a famous name of the day, back when you had to go to the cinema to see a Disney animated classic because they were never screened on the telly; but mostly, TV carried on as usual and there wouldn’t be the kind of disruption that comes with Christmas.
The religious elements of Easter were naturally present, but as my upbringing outside of school was essentially secular, it didn’t impinge much on me beyond the aforementioned ‘Jesus movies’ or the portrait of Christ on the front cover of the Radio Times. As was often the case as a kid, whether illness, a General Election or a religious festival, any time off school was welcome, whatever the reason.
At this moment in time, people are taking a break whilst the media is doing its best to convince them there might not be many more to come. Fresh tensions between the US and North Korea, not to mention the ongoing crisis in Syria and all its terrorist-related offshoots that have recently been remodelled so that any four-wheeled vehicle can now be viewed in the same light as a bomb or machine-gun, could lead some to believe the end of the world is nigh. Yes, there have been better times, though there have been many worse.
When one thinks of, say, the Cuban Missile Crisis, it’s indisputable that the original Cold War certainly posed more of a threat than the current frosty face-off between Russia and the West; the mushroom-shaped shadow of ‘The Bomb’ may never have gone away (and it probably won’t when in the hands of Kim Jong Un), but the fear of nuclear war that hung over my 80s adolescence doesn’t seem to exert the same kind of ever-present paranoia in this century. It’s hard to imagine a government department producing those eerie ‘Protect and Survive’ public information films now; or maybe the powers-that-be simply want us to believe things can only get better.
Each generation that comes of age absorbs the stream of information from media sources (one that is now more abundant than ever before) and naturally comes to the conclusion they are living through dark days; you don’t notice so much as a kid because you think the news is ‘boring’ and parents often shield their offspring from the darkest events that defy an easy explanation – I remember the 1972 Munich Olympics, for example, but only for Olga Korbut and Mary Peters; I was unaware of the Israeli hostages and the whole Black September tragedy until years later; my parents obviously kept me away from all that when it was happening.
Therefore, once you do start to take notice as a teenager or young adult, the world suddenly seems a very scary place indeed. However, if you’ve lived through your fair share of crises on the world stage, you don’t necessarily become blasé, though you do tend to cultivate a more measured response to the latest one. The glut of millennial posts on social media at the end of last year that claimed 2016 to be the worst twelve months ever was received with a pinch of salt by anyone over 35, though from the perspective of an eighteen-year-old, the conclusion ‘Generation Snowflake’ came to was probably accurate. As a member of Spinal Tap once presciently put it, ‘Too mach fakkin’ perspective.’
Anyway, like you (possibly), I’m taking a couple of days off – though I’m not heading for a fall-out shelter; I don’t anticipate an upsurge of views on here for this long weekend, not because none of us will be around come next Tuesday, but because it’s bloody Easter! Enjoy your egg.
© The Editor
If only we could blame it on the EU or Muslims – I suspect that was the first thought that entered the heads of Mail and Telegraph journos when it was pointed out that the word ‘Easter’ had been quietly dropped from the branding on boxes containing the springtime produce of the chocolate manufacturers. It would certainly chime with some of the silliest Brussels directives of recent years, ones concerning new specifications over the size of sausages, ones that prompt Sun campaigns to ‘save the British Banger’ and so on. It would also fit the classic Fleet Street Islamic narrative of Loony Left local councils banning Christmas decorations on the grounds that they might offend the non-Christian community. Alas, no. This particular move appears to have come from the chocolate companies themselves.
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