Ritual of scissors and ribbon

Much can be done with a hefty set of shears and a length of fabric ribbon.

They form a simple public ceremony that has played out at the ends of bridges, roads and railways for more than a century and today they’ll be used to officially open the Huntly section of the Waikato Expressway.

The Transport Agency owns seven pairs of ceremonial scissors to open big-spend infrastructure projects across the country.

Waikato’s set of ceremonial blades have done serious mileage in the past decade.

They opened sections of the four-lane highway at Te Rapa and Ngaruawa hia and those auspicious dates have been cut into its metal for posterity.

The billion-dollar expressway has been carved into the landscape in seven sections from the Bombay Hills to the south of Cambridge.

Work started in January 2009 and is scheduled to finish in late 2021 with the Hamilton section.

The Huntly highway will be open to the public tomorrow – while today the site will be blessed by iwi followed by a formal stakeholder event and ribbon-cutting. For such an occasion, plastic scissors just wouldn’t cut it.

The object must gleam with a heft befitting such a momentous occasion.

An audience, a speech and someone of significance to slice the ritual barrier open and send the ribbon fluttering to the tarseal are all important. The drama is designed to symbolise grand, new beginnings, anthropologist Dr Fraser Macdonald says.

It’s a ‘‘cultural performance’’ used to focus people’s attention on something significant.

‘‘Humans use rituals to mark important transitions or junctures in their collective life. In terms of why they use ribbon and scissors, I don’t really know. It’s a way of symbolising a new birth, almost.’’

The expressway scissors – bought for $259 from the website Fishpond – are no different.

They are part of a modern tradition of ribbon cutting that grew in the public relations scene in the late 1800s – usually for ship christenings – before reaching peak ritual ribbon in the mid 1900s.

Although, the tradition hasn’t waned much. These days ribboncutting ceremonies are used for a range of events or facility openings.

The $409-million, 15km-long Huntly section fits the bill perfectly. The opening celebrations continue tomorrow with a one-off Expressway Classic halfmarathon along the route. Members of the public can then take bus rides along the new section.