Many years ago, I had a friend who grew up Muslim in Singapore. But as a nation with a multiplicity of ethnicities (dominated by Chinese) and religions (most notably Islam, Buddhism and Christianity, as well as a sizeable irreligious population), Singapore’s approach to solving group tensions was to recognise them all. “It was great,” my friend said. “There were public holidays all the time.”
With New Zealand’s brand-new public holiday, Matariki, it is worth considering whether this is just another good excuse for a day off, or, as some see it, something less worthy.
To answer that question, we might look to America’s newest public holiday, “Juneteenth”.
While Very Serious talking heads attempted desperately to convince those that would listen that Juneteenth was a long-celebrated American holiday, the reality is that it was largely unknown around the nation prior to congressional action.
Matariki is not unlike Juneteenth in that it was never a widely celebrated holiday. Certainly it was not universally celebrated among Maori. Different tribes in different regions observed certain long-standing Polynesian traditions surrounding the new year (unsurprising, given that Maori are relatively recent Polynesian colonists of the previously uninhabited islands of New Zealand), but, while some observed the rising of the Pleiades, others recognised the rising of Orion or Rigel.
Prior to nationwide riots in 2020, Juneteenth was properly understood as a regional holiday celebrating the emancipation of Texas slaves. The day was understandably a time of celebration for freed Texas slaves and their descendants. Other states have their own days celebrating the end of slavery at times that correlate with their own history – such as Florida’s Emancipation Day, which the state recognizes on May 20. A more widely observed holiday has been Jubilee Day, which recognizes Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and is celebrated on January 1.
Mises Institute
It must also be asked why Juneteenth or any other similar day has only now been elevated to federal status. After all, abolition and emancipation were settled over 150 years ago. The sole reason for the sudden discovery of Juneteenth is purely political: a response to the months of riots that engulfed America in the wake of the Martyrdom of Saint George Floyd.
Pandering, in a word.
Or worse: the state weaponising an almost-entirely fabricated secular holiday in order to pursue a more sinister political agenda.
This is nothing new. The Romans regularly staged grand holidays – or triumphs – as a political tool. The Jacobins did likewise in Revolutionary France. Napoleon created a holiday to celebrate himself. FDR changed the date of Thanksgiving in order to boost consumer spending during the Depression (although it was reversed in 1941). The Nazis instituted at least four public holidays to celebrate their own triumphs.
Perhaps ironically, the holiday most vilified by the left had similar origins to Juneteenth. Columbus Day was made a national holiday, celebrating the Italian contribution to American history, in response to the lynching of Italians in New Orleans.
It’s surely not coincidental, then, that Matariki is being foisted on New Zealand directly in tandem with the Ardern government’s sinister and underhanded agenda of pushing New Zealand into a racially separatist “co-governance”, with astonishing constitutional power being stripped from the majority of New Zealanders and handed to a tiny Maori elite.
It’s no coincidence either, in that light, that Maori elite are dictating to the non-Maori majority how they are even allowed to celebrate Matariki. ‘No Matariki Sales’ is the order. This, despite venerable holidays like Christmas and Easter being long ago commercialised.
Contrary to Andrew Breitbart’s dictum that politics is downstream from culture, Matariki is the state pushing politics upstream of culture. Matariki is not a naturally evolved cultural event that eventually became a holiday, such as ANZAC Day in Australia, but a holiday imposed on the culture by the state.
Why it’s doing so is abundantly clear.