It's odd, here.
Even 5+ years ago, people still respected this day, more than now. Even in Melbourne, nothing, and I mean almost completely nothing, was open.
Even more than Christmas, this was always the day when the shops stayed closed (including bottleshops).
Now? Unless you're actually a true, attending Christian, it's just a day for sport (two games of Rugby League on TV!), charity fundraising (hospitals, specifically, for whatever reason), and events - music festivals, food markets, etc.
Oh, and the highest rates of hourly pay for the whole year.
Even my own, theoretically Christian family insisted on opening and eating Easter chocolate today, much though I thought that was... Fairly inappropriate.
I dunno, just feels weird, man.
My favourite place to be, on this day, has always been one of two multi-day music festivals held over this time (yes, I know..)
At those, there was always services held somewhere, if you wanted to go to them. But it was just... Good, to be away from all the bullshit, for the weekend..?
I never felt more at home than I did at those events.
But that's not an option this time (thanks Uni/life! :-( ), so I'm just... At my parent's house, doing an assignment. God it feels shit to be "working" today, but that's just reality.
It just makes it much more apparent to me how little "normies" care about this day, for the most part, anymore.
You hardly even hear about the "religious" aspects of today on the news, at all. It's like it barely exists.
Very strange.
Obviously this will vary by country, and even within countries, but I imagine, in Catholic-majority places, at least, today must still have more meaning than that which has been stolen from it, over here?
Just curious, really.
Here in Germany Friday and Monday are official holidays, so everything's closed.
Quite frankly I'm expecting the far-left government to get rid of those holidays "for the climate" or "for Ukraine". And our churches are so aligned with leftism that they'll clap like happy, retarded seals. Denmark recently did something like that.
My family isn't overly religious so Easter, Pentecost and Christmas are more of a family holiday where we come together and cook traditional food on Sunday.
Yeah, Friday is very much like that, here.
But we don't do the "closed on Sundays" thing, as much as you do, so Monday, while being a holiday, is kind of... Nothing. It's just a day off. But without most private businesses being closed. shrug.
Same deal with us for Christmas. I barely even know what Pentecost is, though, ha...
Oh yea, all Sundays are holidays here.
As far as politicans and news go not much happens around Easter. Everything slows down a bit in a no news is good news kinda way.
Pentecost is a bit vague. As I understand it, it marked the end of a 50 day celebration of the resurrection of Christ. It also represents spiritual rebirth. Pentecost Monday is a holiday in Germany.
More broadly to what I've already said - living in a country where "God" has been largely corrupted and excised from public life (including by ostensibly Catholic politicians - weirdly both our current PM, and more than one state premier, describe themselves thus) is... Very empty.
So I hope that you guys can hold onto that.
We've replaced what religion represents with the pseudo-religion (cult, really) that is woke politics and ideology. At the current rate, I see that tearing the country apart not too long after it probably does the US, Canada, NZ and the UK...
I guess this is a "uniquely" Anglosphere problem, at the moment, but it's real fucking bad. So I'm glad that you guys haven't "given up" that part of your national identity, yet!
After all, Germany, or what is now Germany, is arguably up there with the heart of Western Christianity, at least from the Middle Ages through to the 19th, so...
Hold onto that, because the void that "replaces" what Christianity gives humans is clearly something fundamental, which is why wokeness so easily moves in as its replacement, I suppose!
Unfortunately it's the same here. There are only remnants left to hold onto and it feels like it's only a matter of time.
The Evangelical Church is already a far left clown show. They are indistinguishable from leftists on Twitter: rainbow flags, pro-Islam, pro mass migration, LGBT/trannies, climate hysterics, Antifa, pro human trafficking, etc. You name it they support it. The only slightly encouraging thing is that they've lost record numbers of members last year.
The Catholic Church is a little bit better in that regard but they've been jumping the rainbow bandwagon, too. And there's a movement opposing the Vatican so they can push even more shit.
Politicians are just the usual mix of leftist and globalist scum. The biggest party with "Christian" in the name is primarily responsible for flooding Germany with muslims.
All parts of public life have been gleichgeschaltet. If you want to hang on to something you have to do it with friends and family.
For some reason, it is the favorite skin suit of the vile and wretched ruling class the world over, despite the fact that they fail to meet even the most lax of Protestant standards and are actively denounced and barred from attendance by priests and bishops in their districts.
Yeah, that's definitely pretty different then!
South Australia (most German settlers in Aus) has less stuff open on Sundays, but even then, I don't think it's anything compared to what you guys have for that.
As I said in the comment below, I actually didn't know about the Pentecostal stuff, until I looked it up.
We definitely have Pentecostals, here, but they're seen as a bit "weird", if anything. That's about the limit of my knowledge, there...
There definitely isn't any sort of official holiday for Pentecost, over here. In fact, I genuinely did not even know when it was, until you mentioned it, lol...
So I looked Pentecost up - I literally did not know what that was, at all, apparently.
So I guess that tells you something about my upbringing/religious conviction, ha!
Well, it's kinda the birthday of the Christian church. No a big deal :D
I probably wouldn't have know it either if it wasn't a holiday.