Deaglán de Bréadún looks at how we used to celebrate the Easter Rising and how it could be remembered in the future.
As with haute couture, trends in political commemorations vary with the times. The Easter Rising was once very much in fashion, with all the elements of official Ireland crowding the catwalk.
The 50th anniversary of the rebellion in 1966 was designated a national celebration, although many young people at the time found it rather lifeless and hollow. The energy and enthusiasm generated by the Rising and subsequent struggle for independence had been mostly drained away by the Civil War and long decades of economic stagnation, cultural provincialism and mass emigration.
Our leaders marked the anniversary, but they were largely going through the motions and paying lip-service to ideals which had been long-fingered or quietly shelved.
Ending partition was still a national aim, but nobody outside a small band of irredentists took it seriously or believed it capable of achievement. To all outward appearances, partition was now a permanent feature of our island existence and tentative approaches were being made by the likes of Seán Lemass and Jack Lynch to establish a modus vivendi with the Stormont regime.
Then the North blew up. The grievances of the nationalist minority boiled over into street demonstrations and violence. Partition came to look less like a permanent solution and more like a makeshift response to a difficult situation. But there was little enthusiasm south of the Border for drastic remedies. Indeed the Border itself, reviled for decades, now began to have attractive similarities to a cordon sanitaire between us and the Troubles.
Naturally, ideology had to be revised and 1916 began to be played down rather than up. The 60th anniversary in 1976 was best encapsulated in the slogan, "Who fears to speak of Easter Week?" There was a slightly east European touch about the way 1916 changed from being a compulsory item on the menu to something you could only buy from a street-trader. With death lurking in the hedgerows and back-alleys of the North, the Coalition Government of the day was not disposed to glorify the violent deeds of a previous generation.
With the advent of the peace process, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the apparent end of the "war" in the North, it is becoming officially okay to remember 1916 again. So perhaps now we can sort out what we, as a people, really mean when we commemorate the Easter Rising: which elements of its legacy we want to retain and which ones we wish to discard.
Despite the near-deification of the 1916 leaders in the early years of the State, it is self-evident that the mass of the Irish people prefer pursuing non-violent solutions to national problems, including Northern Ireland.
The failure of the latest IRA campaign to generate mass support, and the wholehearted support of the population for the peace process and the aims of the Belfast Agreement, show that people are keen to resolve the conflict, but only by peaceful means. The partition problem has now been restated. It is no longer a matter of driving the British out, but a question of how to create a common political identity for the whole island. Given half a chance and a dignified exit strategy, the British public and many of their leaders would be glad to ease themselves out of Northern Ireland.
So where does 1916 fit into all this?
It was a violent event and, whether or not violence was right or proper at the time, most would say it isn't appropriate to this day and age. Whatever the stumbles and staggers in implementing the Belfast Agreement, it almost certainly signals the end of the so-called "war" and the advent of a new era of peace.
The usual phrase is "peace and reconciliation" but there is, frankly, precious little of the latter. One suspects that, for some people in the South, the agreement is another form of cordon sanitaire, or what the new-age psychologists call "closure".
There continues to be shockingly-little interaction between the two parts of the island at the ordinary community or social level, despite a number of admirable projects North and South. The 1916 Proclamation held out the prospect of unionists and nationalists ultimately overcoming their historic antagonism, but there isn't much sign of a will to bring this about from the nationalists, who are very much the suitor in this relationship.
Just as the methods of 1916 are no longer considered appropriate, perhaps it is time to take a look at some of the trappings of that militaristic legacy. Could we not devise or select a national anthem which is less redolent of the bandolier and the Thompson gun and gives a better reflection of the spiritual and altruistic side of Irish national aspirations?
I am not suggesting some sort of wishy-washy peace-and-love alternative, but something that is robustly unapologetic about the basic aim of reunification but a little less evocative of shot and shell.
Thomas Davis's A Nation Once Again is not entirely devoid of martial sentiment, with its allusion to the brave stand taken by the Greeks at Thermopylae, but it's a better song and rather more tuneful than what we have. Davis, too, would be a more up-to-date role-model for young nationalists than the more violent strand of republicanism. He had many constructive ideas about nation-building and his religion as a Protestant makes him an eminently suitable poster-boy for reconciliation.
None of this is to suggest that any less honour be done to the 1916 leaders. Indeed I strongly recommend the tour of Easter Week locations in Dublin led by Mr Lorcan Collins and his friends, which starts from the International Bar in Dublin most mornings at 11.30 a.m.
Gifted with Brendan Behan-like wit, Collins recently took a group of students from London around the sites but, at the end, even he was stumped by the young Cockney who asked, "What's the deal with Ireland and Celtic and Rangers?" Some disputes you can just never hope to reconcile.