Thought for the Week

It’s here, Bonfire Night, when we ‘remember, remember, the fifth of November’. And soon to follow is Remembrance Day. But hang on a minute, what are we remembering? Both these events, as different as they are, for most people are not about actual memories they personally have or even someone they know has.

And maybe, to some extent, we are missing the target, when thinking about what this remembrance is.

If remembrance is about recalling the memories we are connected to, then these events we are celebrating will become meaningless as they distance themselves from our own experience.

Indeed, hasn’t this already happened with Bonfire Night which is almost exclusively about spectacular fires, rockets and things that explode – what of the event that is the root of it, which may not even come to mind while this is all going on?

And it’s baffling to me why those longing for independence would want to celebrate a FAILED attempt to blow up the London Parliament! The same goes for Hallowe’en – no longer is the root of this in the eve of the Christian feast celebrating All the Saints, but it has been totally secularised and even paganised.

So, Remembrance Day – many, if not most of us, have no personal experience of war or memory of those lost in war, though some of us do. We can ‘bring to mind’ the events and what they have meant for people past and present, and what it means for us now, in the present.

Let’s not let the degradation of those two other events happen to our Remembrance Day! Let’s keep both the day, November 11, and Remembrance Sunday in the best way we can, personally and as a community.

May they never be forgotten but always remembered.

Father Tony Wood, St Kieran’s RC

Church, Campbeltown.