Well it was. It's been hijacked by patriots and nationalists over the last 30-40 years. It's also been propaganised through a national school curriculum for the last 20 years. It's at the point where criticism of anything to do with ANZAC Day is treated with contempt and outrage.
I've never been in the armed forces and I don't agree with war, but I think Anzac Day is the most important public holiday.
At every dawn service I'm overwhelmed by the number of young families who clearly have suffered their own loss.
For me Anzac day isn't even remotely about nationalism or patriotism, it's about love, families, bravery, sadness.
I don't think you need to criticise Anzac Day, you just need to see it from the personal perspective of those people who are remembering lost friends and loved ones.
> For me Anzac day isn't even remotely about nationalism or patriotism, it's about love, families, bravery, sadness.
That what ANZAC day should be about. It should be about the rememberance of the family thinking about their sons, brothers, fathers on the front line.
I am an Australian living in Germany. Every year when ANZAC day comes around, I also try to imagine how the local German families felt when their love ones go to war. In general, the people from the war generation that attended the war were brainwashed into action. For the Germans who can see through the hatred, they are just humans.
I'm well aware of the nature of, and reason for the ANZAC day commemorations. The irony was that an event that served to define New Zealand and Australia's national identities, is also one of British Empires greatest failures.
I don't think that it's ironic that Gallipoli and WW1 in general is what led to Australia and New Zealand starting to view themselves as distinct from the "Home Country" - our experiences in WW1 made it very clear that England didn't consider us colonials to be English, even if we still did at the time.
It's estimated that between 1/4 and a 1/3 of the ANZACs were born in the "Mother Country", so their rejection as being not-British was probably a contributing factor to the passing of the Nationality Act of 1920.
Define our identities? There's hardly anyone (relatively speaking, by comparison to say the US's independence day) outside of Australia/New Zealand that even know about Galipoli.
I think you're confusing external identity (how other countries see us) with national identity (how we see ourselves). Gallipoli was hugely influential in defining how New Zealanders and Australians thought of themselves and their nation. It was our coming of age, the moment when we started to see ourselves as nations rather than colonies.
(Of course, that description is a little bit exaggerated: I'm sure reality was much fuzzier and messier. But that just proves the point that Gallipoli has become our national myth. It defines us now, even if it didn't really define us then.)