Alan Duff: Let's have more festivals

Events that involve kids like the Pasifika Festival spread happiness. Photo / Dean Purcell

This week our town in France has a four day celebration of the ham (jambon) special to the region and it's a major event here second only to the Fete de Bayonne which attracts about a million revellers over five days. Unlike Kiwis, the French resist change and thus things stay much the same.

Kiwis who have lived overseas came back and changed our culture. Our coffee went from instant, in the mid-1980s, to inarguably the best coffee-brewing in the world. Beer consumption has gone steadily down and now craft beer in more measured quantity is the rage despite ridiculous prices, and we drink and appreciate wine a lot more.

The café culture, boutique bars, modest-sized restaurants, are our norm compared to only two decades ago. I know of no other country that could change its social life so drastically to something superior and more civilised. We need more big events to rally and unite behind.

I know Bluff has an annual oyster festival (which I must go to one day.) And there's a wild game festival on the South Island's West Coast. We have wine festivals galore, kapa haka and Pacific Island festivals. Most towns now have a weekly farmer's market which alone have enhanced the quality of life in New Zealand. But they are not events or much more than pleasant occasions.

I'd suggest we need something cultural to hang an event on. Like a bi-annual Kiwi Day all over the country celebrating the different cultures like France has an annual day dedicated to music. Ours could centre round musical performances and food stalls selling a wide range, from Maori boil-up and hangi, to Samoan adaptation of corned beef and chop sui, raw fish, curry dishes from Fiji and India, Chinese and Asian cuisine, and any other national dish of ex-pat residents.

The Bayonne jambon fair will have lots of groups singing traditional Basque songs; there are events especially for children, not just to watch but to participate and interact. Any event that involves children spreads happiness, carefree joy; restrains the beast brought out in (many) young Kiwi men if they've been drinking.

No doubt there'll be idiots who spoil things. But it will quickly evolve to freezing - or chucking out - this type, so the rest can relax and enjoy. Here in France, alcohol is imbibed; just that, culturally, drunkenness is considered the shameful pits, so you hardly see it. And fighting is near incomprehensible.

Kapa haka events have an admirable no-alcohol, no-drugs rule. If every festival and fair had the same atmosphere as our Rugby World Cup hosting did, we can be sure they'd go from strength to strength.

Look how New Zealanders have embraced the Gallipoli and World War I commemorations. It's part of our culture now. We're slowly growing our own culture, awareness of who we are and what made us. For many travelling New Zealanders, a visit to the WWI cemeteries in France and Turkey where our slain soldiers lay is de rigor. More of us celebrate Anzac.

We're slowly growing our own culture, awareness of who we are and what made us.

I have vivid memories of Anzac dawn parades at Whaka in Rotorua. The poignant strains of the Last Post trumpet played from across the river to the gathering at the Memorial Bridge. The ex-WWII Maori Battalion soldiers singing six-part harmony, their vocal power, the emotional might. Kiwis at their best. By eight in the morning the men were downing beers and dark rum and breaking out in beautiful voice while locals and visitors had breakfast in the dining hall.

On farmers markets, our family loved going to the Hawke's Bay market where there'd be not only the array of fresh produce and cooked treats but live music featuring, say, Spanish guitar, a jazz trio. Havelock North's Black Barn fresh produce market is a wonderful experience of socialising, freshly baked bread, whitebait fritters and buying fresh local produce. Most of the world has had markets for centuries. We're quickly catching up. Parnell's farmers market can stand alongside the best.

Apply the same can-do attitude to festive events and watch even more tourists pour in. The colour and vitality of different races would only add to the atmosphere. And remember: children's presence makes for a more civilised experience given our heavy drinking culture. An event like the Fete de Bayonne would not succeed in New Zealand; each night would turn into mass brawls, the streets soiled with blood, vomit, dislodged teeth and utter mess.

But one day, sooner than later, we'll mature to changing that outlook. Because we adapt and embrace change.