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"If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick," – John Cleese

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Palmerston North’s central and most recognisable landmark since the early 80’s was a Christmas decoration that the council decided to leave up year-round: A lit-up white Christian cross on top of a clocktower.

A bit of controversy erupted a year or two ago, when the council decided that the cross no longer represented the multi-cultural diversity of our city, and they started accepting submissions on what to replace it with.

Some Christians (of course) kicked up a big stink, and after a bunch of angry letters the council decided to keep the cross as a symbol, but to replace it with a bigger one (WOW - that's SO multicultural).

Early one evening, months before the new one is ready, a gust of wind knocked over the cross, and it hung limply over the edge like a botched suicide, until workmen took it down with a crane the next morning.

Now that submissions have closed and the new cross is on it’s way, I’m rather annoyed that I never submitted my secret plan for what should’ve been done with the clocktower…

MY PLAN

Ideally (though this first part would be impossible to pull off politically unless done in secret) I’d like to go up there one night, open up the cross, and hide within it a little gold chain of religious icons from different cultures (a little Buddha, a little Ganesh, a little pentagram, a little goddess figure, etc). This way, even though the symbols would not be visible, people who bowed down to the cross would unwittingly be bowing down to a more diverse selection of faiths.

My second move would be to get some expert crafts-people to redo the cross and the clock identically to how they were meant to look (They look a bit shabby nowadays) but install in the cross light that can be programmed to change – slowly fading from one colour of the rainbow into another in the style of the Supré clothing stores’ lighting. This way the cross could remain white most nights of the year, but for special religious and cultural days could be programmed to show a festive colour or range of colours (green for Saint Patrick’s Day, pink for the hero parade, yellow and blue for Massey graduation, etc.). As long as it didn’t become too corporate-oriented it should be sweet. This way the cross could be reinstated as a symbol of spirituality and festivity, but lose some of it’s mono-theistic exclusivity.

The Christian cross as it is recognised today has gone through a number of metamorphoses since it’s inception, both in shape, meaning and context.

Jesus (if he ever actually existed) is generally understood to have been mounted on a crucifix in either the shape of a capital T or an X.

Crosses were frequently used by the Romans as symbols to make fun of Christians by taunting them with their dead messiah, until the Christians ‘reclaimed’ it as a symbol of pride in much the same way as modern black or gay rights movements reclaim the language of their oppressors.

Some of the more earth-based spiritualities that Christianity absorbed on it’s way to the top already had cross symbols with their own meanings, such as the Goddess figure standing with her arms outstretched in the throes of birth. As their holy places were remade certain traces of the old symbolism survived.

Nowadays, with such a diverse array of spiritualities in the world the cross is used by churches and groups ranging from saintly charities to snake eaters to the KKK. It has been subverted and absorbed as a pop-culture icon by everyone from Madonna to Ozzy to Marilyn Manson, as representing both Christian values and Anti-christian values, and with it being absorbed into the superficiality of the fashion world – a complete absence of values.

It is these facts that I think should be commemorated in a plaque at the base of the clocktower, (as well as perhaps a promotional website), and used to exemplify the cross’s potential for reclamation by everyone.

The cross should be given to all peoples of the city, not used as a symbol of religious monopoly by Christianity. Changing the lights but keeping the shape would preserve it’s aesthetic flow-through as a recognized landmark, while allowing everyone to interpret it and “reclaim" it as they choose.

40 photos | 213 views

items are from between 26 Mar 2006 & 27 Mar 2006.