Politics ruins everything. Even holidays.
Like many, I felt my curmudgeonly impulses bristle at the thought of a government-ordained day of star worship. It was too easy to see it as part of Labour’s political agenda to emphasise race in every aspect of New Zealand life. But after a bout of the kind of mature reflection that middle-aged men are famous for, I started to come round. I’ll admit the thought of one more precious day where I wasn’t woken by my alarm at 6am on a cold winter’s morn for the long commute to work had something to do with it. But not everything.
The argument that mainstream New Zealand culture should make more space for Maori traditions is a reasonable one. As well as being of interest in their own right, they give a unique flavour to our nation. I wouldn’t go as far as parroting the progressive mantra ‘diversity is our strength’ (it could just as easily be our downfall), but variety is preferable to boredom and the winter part of the calendar where Matariki now sits could certainly do with some livening up.
Although they are potentially handicapped by the weather, I’ve seen winter festivals in other countries work well – most memorably the Snow and Ice festival in Sapporo, Japan, where I once spent an enjoyable evening watching fireworks while drinking sake at a bar carved entirely from ice.
So I was willing to give Matariki a go. I just needed a little guidance. Into the breach stepped one Paula Bennett (of the part-tangata whenua persuasion herself), who suggested in an online article that ‘Maori New Year’, Matariki, could be akin to the US Thanksgiving – a time for being ‘thankful for all that I have and the nation I reside in’. This resonated – perfectly attuned to my conservative instincts of gratitude for sacrifices and achievements past. I was in.
But waiting to quash this enthusiasm was radio host Stacey Morrison (also of the part-tangata whenua persuasion), interviewed in a NZ Herald article pompously titled “How to Celebrate Matariki Respectfully”. She took issue with the comparison: “[Thanksgiving] is not a day of celebration for indigenous people of America. It’s a day of mourning, in fact, for Native Americans”. She then went on to talk vaguely of food and family togetherness. That’s pretty much every weekend for most of us, I would say. In fact, stuck indoors during these long winter months with our kin, ‘family togetherness’ may be wearing a bit thin…
Just as a non-Maori had found his entry point into this new holiday, it had been torpedoed by an unnecessary piece of woke finger-wagging. Politics ruins everything.
Worse was to come.
What could guarantee wide and enthusiastic adoption of this new holiday more than encouraging businesses to celebrate it? Think of the way the banks trumpet Chinese New Year, supermarkets fill their shelves with hot cross buns and chocolate eggs at Easter, or almost all retailers feature Christmas trees and silly Santa hats in December. Yes, it can get a little crass, but it definitely broadens the appeal of these religious and cultural events.
Some New Zealand businesses were thinking along similar lines when out came the cultural scolds. Skye Kimura, chief executive of Tatou, a “Maori cultural marketing and communications agency” began the “Matariki is Not For Sale” campaign demanding businesses “treat the holiday with respect and not as a sales opportunity”. Of course, if these businesses were “unsure” she urged them to consult “Maori advisors” – a service coincidentally provided by her own company.
Perhaps all those businesses already reeling from Covid and now paying higher wage costs due to this new public holiday are entitled to make a bit of money out of it?
Elsewhere The Spinoff continued the theme. “Matariki is More Than Just a Public Holiday”, its headline warned. Much more. A “cultural practice”, the author of the piece opined, that gives “relief from the western capitalist system of time”. Politics again. And a politics quite alienating to us western capitalists. The author then caused further estrangement, this time from the reality-based community, by claiming that “those with the ability to read the signs based on the brightness of the stars can tell whether there will be floods or drought”. I hope the Met Office know this; they might want to get in touch. Warning of the terrors of commercialisation and exploitation at the hands of us dreaded non-Maori, he then took a surprisingly pragmatic approach: “Non-Maori should not engage in the commercialisation of Matariki for profit that isn’t redistributed to Maori”. Ah, so it’s not so much the commercialisation but who’s benefitting from the commercialisation.
All in all, this inaugural Matariki hasn’t impressed. It seems to be in danger of becoming the province of the woke elite, kept from the masses by politics, po-faced cultural correctness and fears of ‘cultural appropriation’.
To make this ‘public’ holiday truly public and encourage the majority non-Maori population to embrace it, a bit of ‘cultural appropriation’ would seem entirely appropriate.