TGIF

Well, today is Good Friday, as you'll no doubt be aware. And how could you miss it? It's one of the only days of the year when everything shuts down. The TAB make the huge concession of only placing bets on races run overseas. Some people eat fish or chicken. Everyone, except for the poor sods at the TAB, gets the day off.

And you can cast your minds back, no doubt, to the various debates about what should and shouldn't be done on Good Friday. Should there be gambling? Should re-runs of "The Exorcist" be shown?

Which is strange, really, given how little significance the day itself still holds in society. Easter Sunday is an easier day to tackle, because at least then we get to eat eggs. Not that we tend to wait until the Sunday to eat them anyway - they've been on sale in Safeway ever since midnight of Valentine's Day.

But why Good Friday? Is this one last remaining vestige of Christendom, that we still observe it, still keep it sacred, even if we're not quite sure why?

What, I wonder, would our society look like if Good Friday was no longer observed. Probably not much different to how it looks now, I suspect, only we'd have one fewer Public Holiday. No, that's not the important question. What we should really be thinking about is what our society would look like if Good Friday had never happened at all.

It's when we start to imagine that kind of society that the day becomes significant. If you have the time to think about it today, please do, before the chocolate eggs take over and we go back to work. It isn't just tradition that makes us still observe this day. It has a meaning - a deep one, that could really change all our lives if we let it. I hope that it can do that for you this year.