, Columnist
Australia Should Junk, Not Replace, Its National Holiday
Rather than focusing on hard-fought culture wars, the nation should abandon the idea of attaching political meaning to official days off.
Not a day to celebrate.
Photographer: Rohan Thomson/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
What does a country do when it starts going cold on its national holiday? Start relaxing a little.
Australia Day, the Jan. 26 commemoration of the first British colonists’ arrival at Sydney Cove in 1788, has been contentious almost from its founding. Three years after celebrations were formalized in 1935, Aboriginal groups organized the first counter-demonstration, proclaiming the date a Day of Mourning to protest “the 150th anniversary of the white man’s seizure of our country.”