Blog Post - Should we all celebrate the same festivals?

Recently, in a thought-provoking blog post, James Smith claimed that all sectors of the population should celebrate the same festivals. While this may help bring all sectors of the community closer together by fostering an awareness of each other’s commonalities and differences, in my opinion, the main role of festivals should be to cater for specific groups in a country. There are a number of reasons why I believe this.

First of all, we live in a society which is homogenous. Schools and workplaces consist of people from completely different backgrounds but the underlying culture of these places is to have everyone behave in a similar way. Therefore, people’s everyday lives are very similar, perhaps even monotonous. One way to put a bit of spontaneity and heterogeneity into a country is by promoting festivals that cater for specific sectors of the community. Wouldn’t you agree? I come from an ethnic minority and once a year we have a festival to express and celebrate our differences. While it’s fantastic that other members of the community visit and participate in our festival, we don’t expect everyone in the country to celebrate with us.

Secondly, having common festivals, like St.Patrick’s Day in Ireland or Independence Day in America, that we are expected to participate in, increases nationalistic feelings in countries. Increased nationalism has the effect of marginalising minorities and causing more rifts between the various ethnic communities in countries.

Finally, forcing people to celebrate the same festivals can result in people rebelling against what the festival is trying to promote. Ireland has many festivals aiming to celebrate our artistic and literary culture. This is pushed in the mainstream media to the extent that we all feel that we must participate. But some people are just not interested in these topics or things that have happened in the past. Why should they be forced to participate in something in which they have no interest? It will just alienate them.

In conclusion, while it’s wonderful that we all have the opportunity to celebrate our commonalities, from my point of view it’s important that we have as many diverse types of festivals as possible. This will allow all sectors of the community to have something to look forward to outside study and work, ultimately resulting in happier people at a micro-level and a happier country at a macro-level. What do you think? Please feel free to add comments below.