Compare the pair:

This day is call’d the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tiptoe when this day is nam’d, and rouse him at the name of Crispian.

King Henry V (via Shakespeare), October 25, 1415, Battle of Agincourt

And:

A walk is a great way to start the day. It’s Walk to Work Day in support of Diabetes Australia. It took a little over half an hour to do the 2.6 kilometres.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (via a staffer), October 6, 2016, Facebook

The Roman martyrology contains a Rolodex of saints allocated to their calendar days, which the clergy can consult so, among (many) other things, they wear the right liturgical colours.

In a similar way, modern pollies dutifully keep us informed of the particular significance of every day. “Today is Blah Blah Day, where we raise awareness for Blah. #Blah”. The modern parliament is a living causology, reminding us of causes with colourful marketing and polished, general talking points about ‘raising awareness’ so we wear the right colour pin.

Henry V defeated the French at Agincourt and those that survived remembered it always on the feast of Crispian. I’m not sure if, when Walk to Work Day rolls around again, the Prime Minister will remember with tears of joy that he did the 2.6 kilometres in little over half an hour that time. I’m not sure anyone will ever care.

As a Type 1 diabetic, I’m also not quite sure what everyone walking to work is meant to achieve, other than to prevent the walkers themselves getting Type 2 diabetes whilst not missing an opportunity to tell everyone about it. Maybe I’m just grumpy due to high blood sugar.

I am 100 per cent certain that today is also probably an international or national day for something or other. One day, recently, I think there were three different “Blah” days of significance in one calendar day.

Noting these days with a call for awareness and a hashtag, paying lip service to a different innocuous cause appears to be 90 per cent of the job of some public figures. If they’re not careful, the electorate may be tempted to conclude that the parade of pins merely hides the fact the wearer is doing bugger all and is in effect standing for nothing and representing no one.

The confluence of significant things to become more aware of leads to dizzying confusion.

I’m not quite sure if it’s Mental Health Week and Headspace Day, or Headspace Week and Mental Health Day. Two politicians’ pages on Facebook made competing claims. Matt Thistlethwaite MP even suggested it was “Mental Health Month” – perhaps containing within it the RUOK? Octave. Mental health is something close to my family’s lives, but I’m not quite sure what any of these heightened-awareness-time-periods do besides allow people to carry on with their usual business, but under the banner of a cause?

One new Liberal MP who is particularly down with the kids posted a photo on Facebook showing his effort to end violence and abuse against children by painting one of his fingernails bright red. Jokes about red not being his colour because, geddit, he’s a Liberal, quickly ensued. What exactly was the point?

Compare the above quotes again. There’s a difference between the two invocations. Good King Harry was noting the feast day as an aide memoir for his embattled brethren, to remind them of the significance of what they were undertaking that day – thrashing the French at Agincourt.

For the English at Agincourt, the point wasn’t to raise awareness of Crispian. The point was remembering what they did that day. The international/national day of “blah” trend seems to be increasingly an end in itself where politicians, celebrities and public figures can simply prove to everyone they’ve remembered what day it is and pat themselves on the back.

The virtue-signallers, unlike the English longbowmen, invoke a day of “blah” to distract from a complete lack of any undertaking on their part from day to day, a lack of direction or purpose, a vacancy ably veiled by the unimpeachable, colourful and superficial day of “blah” phenomenon.

The well-intentioned cause manufacturers have made a crutch for politicians who aren’t really doing much from time to time.

There was once a significance to things like this. Legacy Day, for example. It wasn’t just about telling everyone what day it was. People got out and sold badges and did something tangible.

Now, all you’re expected to do is tell everyone that you know, so that they know, so they can tell more people, so more people know just how much they know, just how important awareness of “Blah” is. In the end you forget whether it’s a day, a month or a week and you forget precisely what it is you care about.