I’ve had a couple of moments in supermarkets recently where i’ve wondered what the world is coming to (and also, in the next thought, how old i am exactly these days and at what point will i turn into my Nana?)
I make some attempt, blogged variously over the years, to make sure my children are familiar with the reasons behind the various festivals we indulge in; we discussed Pancake Day when it came up and went through the various bits of Lent, Shove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, meanings of 40 days and so on. I know i knew all about Lent in my very Christian Junior School, we all used to try and give something up just for the sake of it really.
However, i laughed out loud (more eccentric woman looks) as i walked through Sainsbury’s and passed 2 heavily veiled, top to toe in black Muslim women, just as one exclaimed “OOOOOH! Pancake Day!!!!”
Well, at least it isn’t just the white quasi-Christians doing it then.
Today, i was stood next to someone in the queue, getting the normal “Oh, i bet you’ll be glad when this lot are back at school” remark and she suddenly said “I don’t know why they’ve made Easter so early this year, it’s just ridiculous!” I thought, shall i point out that it is a movable festival determined by The first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. or shall i not bother?
“I know,” i replied, “This government just doesn’t know what it’s doing anymore…..”
ROFL Merry 🙂
I especially like the idea of Shove Tuesday…
lol! The problem is that the holidays haven’t started until today and we haven’t really had time to prepare for it. End of term was today although some areas seem to have different Easter Hol arrangements. Fortunately I’ve managed to wrangle a last minute Easter Sunday lunch out of friends :-). I feel a bit guilty that I’ve not managed to arrange any sort of Easter get together / egg hunt myself.
Oh that is hilarious!!! Ive heard people complain about Easter being early too. I really think that the majority of the people have no clue how Easter is determined! This just cracked me up!
giggle to veiled ladies getting excited about pancakes, and too Easter being far too early! Although I do have to say that I think having just the Friday and Monday off then having “spring holidays” in a few weeks would make a lot more sense for school types!
ROFL!
Schoolkids here are not on holiday for another couple of weeks. They only get today and Monday off then back to school.
Jan, ah yes. Oops!
EF, given a large proportion of my local friends are Muslim to one degree or another, trust me, it’s a concept i’m familiar with. And they were very definitely of an Arabic origin; they were wearing a Niqab but their eye area was quite visible.
It wasn’t in any way a racist comment, merely a description of my sense of religious festivals being commercialised and blurred at the edges stretching further than the easily typified “white, english man is his castle, i’m all right jack, no-one does it better than us” stereotype.
I find that oddly reassuringly at the same time as depressing.
And, though i understand why you say it, i’m quite an intelligent and enlightened woman, you know. I don’t need such obvious things spelling out generally. If i did, i might not be remarking on the comedy value of the two instances.
I was just trawling around the internet to find a basic explanation about Easter for my children, as they appear to be obsessed with the idea that Easter is about 6 foot high bunnies passing out choco eggs willy nilly (also a bit like the thing they have about Christmas being about tubby white bearded man in red suit giving out presents) – and I wanted to give it a bit more depth than that, so your explanation helped. Educationally we give our kids an overview of the different seasonal and religous festivals global, but it isn’t always easy just to pare them down to the essence.
Re: “Well, at least it isn’t just the white quasi-Christians doing it then.” If they were veiled then colour of skin may not have been quite obvious, not much except the clothes would be obvious but not all heavily veiled top to toe in black are erm…’not’ white. These days there are no ‘typical’ muslims as there are no ‘typical’ christians. There are plenty of the be-veiled ones that could be termed, erm…white.
I suppose what made me laugh was that, being there, it was blatantly obvious that they were completely unaware of anything Christian related to Pancake Day at all (along, i suspect, with most of Peterborough, if i am going to make sweeping generalisations). They could just have easily have said “OOOH! Easter Eggs!” It was funny 🙂
It was just as funny when the woman blamed “THEY” for the early Easter date.
I was a bit sharp back – i’m feeling acerbic. See above. Sorry.
You didn’t strike me as being ‘racist’. I don’t believe that race is anything to do with white or black.
I make a lot of presumptions about people based on what country they were brought up in, the tendency is to bear the mark of the goverment maintained schooling systems. I can also look at a gathering of kids in our village and pick out the local schools they go to purely based on their behaviours. If I see a woman dressed like Rose in ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ I do think ‘tart’. If I see a person with a generous layer of ‘padding’ on them I presume they are eating more than is healthy. LOL. It’s like an automatic thing. I also presume other people do the same.
I think we have to overcome this impulse to judge people based on what we see in the first 30 seconds, but thing is, the rub is, we can also judge quite accurately based on how people are ‘appearing’ too. That big person was eating too much. The woman with the skirt was wearing it for ‘easy access’. One of the local schools does produce children that look like tired weasels at the end of the day. If I meet a Swede then almost every single time they will prove to be very odd in a way that unsettles my peace of mind. I guess that would make me a racist, amongst other things.
It has never crossed my mind that you are anything less than a woman of considerable intelligence.
Not judging people by the colour of their skins, it IS an obvious thing, though not to everyone.
And yeah, it is a depressing joke that anyone would get excited about pancake day in that way, but the meaning isn’t lost, it is mostly the symbolism and the food that keeps the festivals celebrated..we wouldn’t celebrate any day if there were not some incentive.
I was being a stickler, and insinuating that a more effective way to view people is to overcome the impulse to use skin colour as a way to generalise whoever (plural or singular) and I was too assertive about my opinion in an arrogant way. Sorry.