What fresh hell is this? National VE day

[wetpants]

This has popped up on my local FB page, villagers are all up for it too. Apparently it’s a nationwide incentive??

The thing is, most front gardens are tiny or non existent here. There’s no way you could be 2m away from your next door. Also these villagers who are up for this are the same people who few weeks ago cried about a lone bloke sitting on a crass verge, well away from any pedestrians. How is this any different?

I’m not British (have lived here a long time though) so maybe I’m just not getting the fervent VE day misty eyeness

And don’t get me started on 9pm nationwide singalong WHO comes up with these things???

OMG no.. I hate all my bastard neighbours anyway.

Why not play Ode to Joy? Surely that celebrates Europe?

I'm with borntobequiet on this - I am just old enough to remember rationing too, and am fed up with the jingoism - Vera Lynn sing songs etc. Going by what my late parents said, yes people were mighty glad that the war was over, but for many it was a peace tinged with sadness as friends and family had been lost, and others had lost their homes. A lot of people were keen to rebuild after WW2, not go on about 'our finest hour'. Hence all these international organisations which were set up.

We have also had a taste of what the Blitz spirit was really like - some people helping out others being all for themselves.

It's the same with Remembrance Day - the Remembrance Sunday was enough when people who had been in both wars were alive. Suddenly, in about the late 1990s we have to have Remembrance Sunday and the day itself commemorated. If one day was good enough for the real veterans, why isn't it good enough for those who weren't born until many years afterwards?

@BubblyBarbara so basically we hav to join in a VE Day party or else we deserve to suffer. Wow. Really makes me want to join in. Thanks for that. This is exactly why I'm so twitchy about it. The guilt tripping. Celebrate this thing or you don't deserve to live here and you're ungrateful for the sacrifices people made and yada yada.

I will be thinking of my Dad, who (aged 21), was with the troops who liberated Bergen-Belsen

My Dad too, Suited.

Just ignore it @wetpants

What is it about MN where people have to be all sneery about things like this and almost seem to look down on those who take part?

Yup. Ignoring it totally

@SuitedandBooted Oh don't worry, I'm well aware of what Bergen-Belsen is. After all, six million of my people did die in a little thing called the Holocaust.

If you trendy younger types don’t want to celebrate your freedom to do whatever you like then maybe you don’t deserve it

This is like the enforced poppy wearing.

Worra I’d assume that small country doesn’t have a day where they celebrate that independence.

And since when has VE Day/ Liberation Day across Europe ever glorified war? Generally it does the opposite of that.

I had a Whatsapp message asking me how I was planning to keep up morale as an officer’s wife...

I wonder how Japan feels about VJ Day celebrations in August?

@EmbarrassedUser I'm not looking down on anyone! I just don't feel up for it because I live alone and I have no-one to celebrate it with!

I don't see it as an excuse to "celebrate" at all. That "we won, we won, na na" jingoistic nationalistic, flag waving, rule Britannia, we are the greatest, utter crap is nothing at all to do with what those who fought that I've spoken to, wanted us to remember

And yet the entire country went completely bonkers on VE Day itself. There’s loads of footage to prove it. Perhaps those people you’ve spoken to have forgotten that or just got more miserable in their old age.

Why are people so secretive on MN? It's not like saying which country you're from is going to be massively outing.

And no one has ever done a deep dive on a profile to look back through posts and work out who someone is? That’s happened several times.

What is it about MN where people have to be all sneery about things like this and almost seem to look down on those who take part

I thought it was the other way round.

I never do get this weird glorification of what was a bloody brutal war...but guess it fits into the blitz spirit narrative that the government is forcing down our necks.

I hope it rains

Cologne47118

Forced street parties?? Don't be ridiculous. Are people actually that bothered about possible random Facebook disapproval? Grow up.

I object to the dismissive, and disrespectful tone from some on here. "Too long ago, who cares". Lots of people do care.

Worra I’d assume that small country doesn’t have a day where they celebrate that independence.

Huh? I'm just wondering why there's so much cloak and dagger on MN about where people come from, especially if/when they take a pop at Brits and the UK.

Not that the OP is necessarily doing that but she's still doing the cloak and dagger bit.

@Peregrina agree re the years between the end of the war and the 50th anniversary. I remember as a child in the 1970s asking my dad why we didn't have a silence on the day itself and why the silence on the Sunday wasn't observed across the country - eg if you were out and about you certainly didn't stop what you were doing, traffic didn't stop, the ceremony wasn't on telly etc.

He said that it was more important for people to get on with their lives and he didn't really want to think about it anyway because he was just glad it was over. That seemed to be the prevailing consensus amongst adults at the time. It hadn't been a happy time for them and why keep on about it.

The big 50th anniversary celebrations were definitely politically motivated by a struggling government desperate to drum up support and were and have been keenly latched onto by the generations born some time after the war ended.