Since the start of the Covid pandemic there have been calls for the State to hold a day of remembrance or reflection when it is all over. Commemorations have proven notoriously thorny of late, but it would be difficult to offend anyone with this one. Or so you might think. The brief is simple enough. It should be sober, thoughtful and meaningful, offering a moment to remember the lives lost, to draw breath, and to acknowledge the enormous sacrifices made across society.
Handed this remit, what does Fine Gael come up with? An "Irish Thanksgiving" – a suggestion so crass and outlandish that a few people wondered if it was a joke.
But, no, it seems to be entirely genuine. The party's official Twitter account asks users to have their say on "a Thanksgiving Bank Holiday on Monday 29th November", along with a graphic of a supersized cooked turkey. It links to a survey offering several multiple choice questions about when the bank holiday should be, who should be commemorated and how.
Presented with the predictable backlash to this latest social media own goal – some 1,000 comments, and not a single positive one that I counted – the party hastily pushed out two other tweets asking "are you in favour of a St Brigid's Day Bank Holiday on the 1st of February?" But it's the Thanksgiving-approximate November 29th that it was originally gunning for.
The proposal came from Ciaran Cannon, a TD for Galway East and a member of the Budgetary Oversight Committee, who wants us to "share Thanksgiving weekend with 35 million Irish-Americans and give a much-needed boost to our local businesses".
Vulgar
The notion that a day commemorating the lives lost in the pandemic might be the perfect opportunity to stock up on Penneys fluffy pyjamas, games consoles or cut-price TVs before Christmas is unspeakably vulgar.
Only slightly more objectionable is the suggestion that the over 5,000 lives lost to Covid presents an unrivalled excuse to cosy up to America.
Why we even need to do this when they’ve already shamelessly culturally appropriated both St Patrick’s Day and our traditional Hallowe’en is, frankly, a mystery.
This is an embarrassing, tasteless bit of forelock tugging which demonstrates that Fine Gael’s tendency to occasionally and spectacularly misjudge the mood of the room remains undimmed.
Although for most Americans Thanksgiving is a day wrapped up in tradition and togetherness, it is undeniably also a celebration which romanticises colonisation. We might be better served to take our lead from Native Americans in New England, who hold a national day of mourning every year on Thanksgiving.
The poll on the party’s website also invites votes on who should be commemorated. The length of the list (11 categories in total, including groups as disparate as scientists and virologists, cleaners and delivery drivers) highlights the challenge the Government is facing with the escalating fiasco of the so-called Covid bonus.
Listen, I love the sight of Wayne, my delivery guy, sprinting to my door armed with another Zara box as much as the next person, but I’m not sure we need a national holiday commemorating the country’s Waynes.
Slice of the pie
The idea that frontline healthcare workers should be rewarded in some way is a difficult one to argue with. Significantly easier to argue with are all the other sectors now lining up for their slice of the pie.
In fairness it was Tánaiste Leo Varadkar who started it with the suggestion that retail workers and civil servants who worked on pandemic unemployment payments might be entitled to something. But as he's discovering, it's much easier to start giving away cash than it is to stop. Now the teachers' unions and gardaí want a bit of the action, with gardaí hinting that a cash payment would be more suitable than a bank holiday.
At the latest tally the cost of a bonus for all public sector workers would come to €1 billion. And then, while we’re rewarding civil servants for doing their jobs, some might wonder where the recognition is for those who actually lost theirs?
If we’re rewarding teachers where’s the bonus for the pupils who were locked out of the classroom and away from their peers for eight months? Or for the parents who doubled jobbed as teachers?
Or the over-70s who were misled into thinking that they were forbidden from leaving the house? Or for the people in nursing homes who were forgotten about in the first phase of the pandemic?
Or the business owners whose livelihoods were wiped out overnight?
Sinn Féin, the unrivalled leader in Late Late Toy Show-style politics, wants the bonus paid to frontline workers, plus €200 for every adult in the country, plus another €100 for every child at a cost, it says, of €522 million. Oh, and it wants us all to get a bank holiday too.
Contributions
A national holiday is a good idea in principle. It is a fairer way to reflect the contributions made by people across society than paying some for turning up to do their job while ignoring others who would have loved to have a job to turn up to.
The truth is that it is simply not possible to put a cash value on what Covid cost us as a society or what it is still costing us as individuals. If there is a spare €1 billion knocking around it would be far better spent on improving the working conditions of frontline healthcare workers and allowing them some additional leave.
Let’s abandon the divisive idea of a cash bonus, have a moment of sober reflection on St Brigid’s Day, and never speak again of the “Irish Thanksgiving” .