How to carry Anzac forward

You don’t hear a lot about Anzac middays. Anzac dawns, certainly.

Sunsets take on a Last Postinfused resonance too.

Middays aren’t especially ceremonial, as a rule.

By that stage, even among those who hold the day most personal, most dear, it’s a time for conviviality, relaxation, sustenance.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with that.

But just as the day itself has its, shall we say, unflash passages, so does the traditional task of staging it. And the fact that New Zealanders have been doing so for a century doesn’t mean that work can be entrusted to some sort of automatic pilot. There isn’t one.

This year, as ever, a good deal of work has been put into preparing for the events and oftentimes it’s been carried out by a distressingly small number of people. And they’ve been aging. Others do step forward to fill the gaps but there’s many an RSA out there that could do with a hand, even so. Anzac Day work needs infusions of more than background personnel. New ideas, too, surely have their place.

Drastic overhauls are neither required nor welcome.

The ceremonial familiarities give us a common frame of reference and speak to the very nature of a traditional service.

A tradition to which adult New Zealanders are continuously introducing new generations.

The last thing we need is to introduce elements of perilous fashionability.

But even within the timehonoured frameworks there should always be some room for manoeuvre.

Minor ceremonial changes, thoughtfully included, can enhance proceedings without subverting them.

Tradition and paralysis aren’t the same thing. That’s easily said.

It still leaves the small matter of what might change.

And that, surely, is a matter for each community and each organisational body to answer for.

This isn’t a subject in which anyone should go blustering in to slam fists on tables and say ‘‘here’s what you need to change . . .’’

In fact it’s not easy to think of an area where mutual respect is more of a necessity.

Would-be innovators are walking on emotional eggshells.

Much as the nation tries to draw uplift and encouragement from the day’s commemorations, a pained and profound grief is never far from the surface. So let’s everyone step carefully. If we’re going to give innovations some serious thought, it would surely be helpful to start thinking about such things early. Perhaps not right now, though. Because the organisers have stepped up and come up with the goods once again. They’d probably appreciate a break.