CARNIVALITIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 311, 31 December 1923, Page 6

CARNIVALITIS.

BAD ATTACK IN AUCKLAND-CHRISTMAS-NEW YEAR MERGER. CITY IN CARE-FREE MOOD. Except those people who have to run the city's transport and the people who depend on the sort of retail vradc that always looks forward to a holiday har\est, nobody in Auckland seems to have been working since Christmas Eve. True the holidays fall this year in such a, way that they leave some rather fragmentary days in between —days that are hard to dispose of, especially when there is a predisposition towards holidays. But something similar was noticeable last year as well—a sort of itching to run the Christmas and New Year celebrations into one elongated holida3'. This year many of the big warehouses have made no bones about it, but have simply shut down over the whole period rather than bring their hands back for a spasmodic day or so in between the two great festivities.

Boxing Day is understandable and a recognisable secular appendage to the Church celebration of Christmas, hut the man who invented the Day after Xew Year's Day must surely have been a New Zcalandor and one born in the sunny north at that. Or was he from the Scottish country of the south where Xew Year's Day and New Year's Eve arc two serious mutters in the celebration line, and more than one Seotcti head with that "morning after" feeling is devoutly thankful for that essentially colonial institution of the "Day after*' New Year's Day? However, it may be we are drifting more and more into a state of prolonged holiday from Christmas Eve right on until the New Year festivities arc over, and the town returns to something more like normal again. St. Hippos. "Who could be bothered with business when there is a race meeting every day?" said a countrj- visitor to a "Star" reporter this morning. He agreed that the tendency in Auckland was to make a sort of carnival of the season, or rather two seasons, somewhat in the same spirit that the people of Southern Europe keep up their carnivals round about Easter. "Why you newspapers want to come out, I can't think," resumed the countryman. "I'll lie bound that not one in a thousand reads more than the acceptances and results of the races that happen every day. You may find someone reading a heading or two on the cable page, but the horse and the racecourse are all that people really have any inclination to study at this season. Personally I would be delighted if the world were content to make a week or a fortnight of it at Christmas and New Year, and then let us settle down to work for the rest of the year. There arc too many spasmodic holidays in this country; they are neither good for man nor business. Yes, I say, let us make a carnival fortnight of it right out, and have done with the holidays once and for all."

No Stint of Cash. While there is so much money to spend as there obviously is this Christmas and New Year people will have their fill of holidays; and it is only when times are hard that the beaches are deserted and* the totalisator fails to draw its mob of optimistic devotees. So that from the materialistic point of view this obviously caTe-frce condition of Aucklanders' farewell to 1923 and shaking 1924 by the hand is pleasantly disillusionising to those who thought we were bound to get the reflection of the rather dull time they have been having in Great Britain during the last twelve months.

So far butter keep* up, wool has taken a jump, nnd as long as those two together with iamb continue to be so popular with the people of the Old Land Auckland will continue to be a merry place during the tail end of December and the first flush of the month of January.

Aucklanders don't always rcali-ewhat a very busy place they live in, and what great crowds of people flock in to taste the city pleasures as a reward for many months of more or less strenuous toil in the country. An Aucklander who has been livin, in the i South for some time and comes back to the northern city with a fresh viewpoint jexpresscd ihw surprise to a "Star" reporter this morning at the great strides the city had made during the last twelve months. Although he knows his Auckland well, he says he could not have believed he could have noticed such a jump in such a brief while. He explained it by saying that few Aucklnnders realised how the back-country was continually coming in. When the farmer depended on the usual cropping ibis land was a long while being broken in, and very often the poor man was Ila id under the sod that he so diligently tilled before the family cot'ld see rnuc'i return for its laborious work. To-day with dairying in the ascendant the man on the land looks to make quite a nice 'little competence in about half the time the old farmer looked to have his place broken in. Auckland has a surprising lot of back-country yet to come in—particularly in the North, and every pound of butterfat that is raised jmeans more population in the city and imore gaiety at Christmas and New ;Year.