[Rector]

The Royal Easter Show

 

In Sydney, Australia, there is a greatly loved institution called the Royal Easter Show. The country comes to the city and shows off its agricultural produce. There are machinery displays, produce, buying and selling.... it's a wonderful event. Of course, for we city kids, Sideshow Ally was the best part of the show; a place of great wonder. All those tremendous shows, most of which would never be allowed these days due to political correctness, or the potential danger of legal action. There was this character who was eating his way through an FB Holden; now that was interesting. Then there was the man who had a tail, but I wasn't willing to spend the money to find out if it were true or not - one of my mates said it was all done with mirrors. Some would say a society without such "freak" shows is a better society. This is assuredly true, but then a society that needs to ban such shows is definitely not a better society - what price freedom? Then there was the boxing tent, the pigmy and dwarf show, the lady with a beard .... All gone now!

I think it was out of protest that my son-in-law bought our grandson the Cowboy show bag with its excellent selection of plastic weapons of mass destruction. Do you remember when they were sample bags? They were never sample bags in my time, although we still called them by that name. The Hoadley's bag was always the best buy with Nigger Boy licorice (for some reason the name was later changed!) a close second. Uncle Bert always said that the Show was one of the best places to determine the IQ of the general public. As he said, "Those who get through the gates and head straight for the Show Bags, buy twenty or so, and then carry them around the Show for the rest of the day, should be quietly removed to a secluded part of Australia so that there genes can't spread into the wider population." We got the message and would never even suggest that we buy the Show bags until we were about to go home.

I sometimes think Easter might best be remembered for what it used to be rather than the politically sanitized event we call Easter today. There was a time when they wouldn't even hold the Easter Show on Good Friday out of respect for the significance of the day? That was a long time ago. Still, in the end, the significance of Easter can never be eradicated by the sanitizing efforts of secular society. The significance of the empty tomb is like a piercing light enlightening the dark recesses of the human soul; the hope of life in death.

 

[Pumpkin Cottage]
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