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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday#:~:text=Good%20Friday%20is%20a%20widely,somber%20nature%20of%20Good%20Friday.
This is actually quite interesting, and things are not necessarily how you might expect, based on the respective "religiosity" of the country...
So what I'm used to, in terms of holiday, day off, everything's closed, etc, is far more of a Protestant thing...
Hence it is much more of a thing in the UK, Northern Ireland, Canada to some extent, Aus + NZ, Germany and Scandi, as opposed to, say, the Republic of Ireland, the US and other parts...
But also, that isn't consistent, because fucking Cuba does it, as does Malta, but Italy doesn't... Spain does, parts of South America don't. You get the general idea...
There really isn't any logically reasoning as to where does it, and where does not.
Just seems to be one of those things.
But it's always been seen as like, a pretty big thing here, which stands in sharp contrast to what some of you describe.
I like that, at least. I hope that tradition stays, even as we become increasingly "Americanised"...