Slack Sabbaths?

It's one minute to midnight on a Saturday night

and I'm back in Northern Ireland for the first time in many, many years

Below me, the bars and clubs of Belfast are doing a roaring trade.

The city is jumping and the weekend is in full swing...

..but Saturday night is about to become Sunday morning.

And a Sunday has always been a very special day in Northern Ireland.

My name's Peter Curran. I'm a writer and presenter,

who left Northern Ireland for the glamour of London building sites

back in the 1980s.

It was the height of the Troubles, when, if you were lucky,

Sundays were drab and dull,

and, if not, they were violent and nightmarish.

The Sabbath could be the worst day of the week.

The teenage me spent many a Sunday

mooching about the empty streets of north Belfast,

dreaming of girls and rock and roll stardom.

But it's 2012 now, there's peace and prosperity,

and I'm here to refresh my idea of Northern Ireland in its Sunday Best.

So, I want to find out

what the changes to Sundays in Northern Ireland are...

..and maybe show you the differences that have evolved slowly

but are really startling when set against the good old bad old days.

What do people feel about Sundays in a society

that's certainly less religious and more peaceful

than the one I left behind?

Hi!

So, what's Sunday mean to you?

Sunday means a hangover all day and then party all night.

Usually very hungover and you just want to eat all day.

Tomorrow is a day of rest,

and I will lie in as long as I can...

I just want to go out and have a good time

and don't really want to think about the repercussions

of having an alcoholic beverage.

Listen, hats off for being able to say the word repercussions

at one o'clock in the morning on a Saturday night!

Sundays used to be probably the most special day of the week for people.

Do Sundays have any kind of religious significance for you?

Mmm...no, no not really.

You'd have to get dressed up in your best, go to Mass,

and then have your Sunday dinner and all round with family,

but it's not the same now.

I'm going to work in Magaluf all summer,

so being a Christian isn't really an option at the minute...

And so begins another Ulster Sunday.

It's 8am on a sunny Sunday morning in Belfast.

# Sunday morning... #

And the unique atmosphere is exactly as I remember it from my youth.

As the poet Billy Wordsworth once said,

"Dear God, the very houses seem asleep,

"and all that mighty heart is lying still".

Mind you, there are some people in Northern Ireland

who've always found Sundays just a little bit boring.

The day the North stood still!

But is Sunday still a snoozefest

in the regenerated peaceful and prosperous Ulster?

And call me an even-handed fool,

but I want to see how both of the big religious communities

spend the sacred seventh day.

The Bible says call the Sabbath a delight and we do call it a delight.

Delight for many on the Sabbath

can come from words that are less than holy.

Any of the stories over the past few years which have been big sellers,

probably would involve sex, politics, power and religion.

And then there's the eye-popping Sunday Spectaculars

that could NEVER have happened in my day...

We always say at the top of the show, expect the unexpected.

But let's begin by getting to the roots of our old sedate Sundays,

and it all goes back to the Good Book.

The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.

In it thou shalt not do any work,

thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter,

thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,

nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger

that is within thy gates.

That'll get you out of that shift at Tescos.

Infamously, the authorities here used to lock up

the kids' swings on a Sunday.

Such strictness is a thing of the past,

but many still respect the Lord's day.

So I went to Conor to meet the Reverend Richard Murray,

for tea, buns and to touch on matters biblical.

-Reverend Murray, I presume?

-Yes?

-Peter Curran.

-Good to meet you.

-You too.

-You're welcome to Conor.

-Thank you.

-It's good to have you here.

-Thanks for seeing us on a Saturday.

-Not at all, you're very welcome.

May we come in and see you prepare for the day tomorrow?

-Come ahead.

-Lovely.

The Reverend Murray is a member of The Lords Day Observance Society

and believes in preserving Sunday as a God-ordained day of rest.

And that means no film crews in the house,

so we came to see him on a Saturday

as he prepared for the Sabbath.

So, what wouldn't you do on a Sunday?

On a Sunday we wouldn't go the shops at all.

We wouldn't watch television.

We would try to avoid public transport.

It's simply a way of trying not to let other people have to work

and also a way of just keeping ourselves just for worshipping God.

The Ballymena area was always seen as Ulster's Bible Belt -

and braces - but these days, even here,

Sunday is a shopping day for many people.

The shops are just allowed to be open and there's sport happens

and there has been an erosion...

But yet there doesn't seem to be a very vocal protest.

People just don't listen any more and no matter how much we protest

they're just going to carry on with their agenda.

But it never gets to the point where you think,

"We might be wrong"?

No. We take our stand upon the unchanging word of God,

and the Commandments were written in stone after all,

they weren't written on paper to be ripped up,

they were written in stone, so we believe that they're there

and they're fixed for eternity.

There can be wind erosion, though,

that can take the letters off stones sometimes!

Do you feel that Sundays are always going to be significant

for Protestant people in this part of the world

or around Ballymena or are we on the road to nowhere?

I think for Protestant people

the Lord's day will always be significant.

It is the fourth of the Ten Commandments...

..there are ten, not nine, commandments and yes,

things HAVE slipped, but we believe with a revival

of genuine Christianity there will once again

be the implementation of laws, like trading laws

or whatever it is to protect the Lord's day.

Is it an easy thing for you to do on Sunday

to devote yourself to prayer and going for a walk

rather than entertaining yourself or is it a struggle?

No, it's not a struggle because, as a committed Christian

you just want to spend time with the Lord and with the Lord's people...

and it's not a struggle at all.

-Really?

-No, not at all.

The Bible says call the Sabbath a delight

and we do call it a delight.

But what about all the young dudes of Ballymena?

In the age of an internet social life

and manic texting, do they really delight in the Lord's day?

Are Sundays a day that you might look forward to,

in terms of your faith, but dread as teenagers?

I do like it... I do, I think it's a really good day

and I have a good time on a Sunday, to be honest.

You've got to remember it's God's day,

so you have to spend time with God.

Have you noticed that people outside your church and school community

are understanding of your faith or do they think it's strange?

I suppose there's a number who see it as a wee bit weird...

kind of like not living your life, so to speak,

then there is other ones who respect we have a faith.

They're going out, they're clubbing, and we're sitting in

and they invite you and say, "Why're you not doing this?"

and we say, "We're Christians. We don't believe it's the right thing to do."

Yeah, there would be that element of everyone thinks you're strange.

I'm really interested in how you think life is going to develop

for your faith and for Sundays over the next 10 or 20 years,

given that it's such a time of change at the moment.

It's like our responsibility to try to change it back to how it was

and try and make sure that they don't all open on a Sunday

and Sunday becomes like every other day.

The world is becoming more secular

and religion is trying to be more accessible...

I've actually seen with mine own eyes

a vicar in a denim waist-coat...

So, there's an attractive resolve to this corner of Country Antrim

where they're still trying to keep Sunday special.

But for the Keep Sunday Special squad, it's been a losing battle.

In 1995, our leaders thought to ask people in Northern Ireland

if they'd welcome the shops and businesses trading on a Sunday.

And a majority of us replied, "What time do you open?!".

What about working on a Sunday? Is that not a real drag?

Would you not prefer to be lying in, playing footsie with each other, reading the papers?

Need the mortgage paying.

THEY LAUGH

No, I enjoy working on a Sunday, it doesn't bother me.

I work every day, my favourite days are Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

On Friday afternoon through to Sunday

we get a lot of people from the UK coming,

from all over England and Scotland.

We've moved on in our society, it's come a long way and why not?

More tourists coming, so, we've got to accommodate them.

It's a new era now, and we don't want to go back

to nobody out on a Sunday, the swings all chained up

and everything like that, no, it's better now.

-Fantastic, thanks very much for talking to us.

-All right, then.

Although, unlike the rest of the UK,

where you could be buying a new pair of shoes

or a chicken at ten o'clock in the morning on a Sunday,

in Northern Ireland, the big shops don't tend to open

until one in the afternoon,

thus giving us all lots of time to go worshipping in the morning.

Because, after all, that's what people want in Northern Ireland

on a Sunday morning...isn't it?

-Hello, Sunday World.

-The Sunday World and the Sunday Life

battle it out for readers every week

and their success depends on understanding exactly

what fascinates Northern Irish readers on a Sunday morning.

The headline screams at you, the introduction shouts at you

and the picture is a window on the world!

Two newspaper editors, I want a nice clean fight,

no holding onto each other...

but tell us, what are Northern Irish readers

looking for on a Sunday morning, Jim?

Romance! Same auld thing...

tragedies and triumph, that's what newspapers are about.

There's three things we aim to do on a Sunday -

inform, entertain and expose.

If you do those things on a Sunday for people

you're doing your job right.

If it takes your breath away, it's a good story.

Could be a financial scandal, could be a sex scandal...

It could be something which makes you want to pick up the paper.

The Sunday papers here have to gel with the people who live here,

'cos we expose criminals, we expose paedophiles,

we expose drugs dealers, and that's what we do,

and that's why Sunday papers sell.

Do you get a sense that it's quite an edgy hot house here sometimes

with some of the stories that you break?

It is a busy newsground and I suppose one of the reasons

there's so much crime here is because of the aftermath,

the legacy of the Troubles and what the paramilitaries are up to now...

but for a place the size of Northern Ireland,

less than two million people, there have been a lot of scandals here...

and there have been a lot of big stories...

Any of the stories over the past few years which have been big sellers

for either of us probably would involve sex,

politics, power and religion.

# God bless you, please, Mrs Robinson... #

The Iris Robinson affair,

there were weeks we were selling an extra 25,000 copies,

literally selling every copy out.

So, I wonder, when Sunday morning comes around

and you two guys wake up in your bed,

do you have a quiet smile at the havoc you're wreaking

throughout Northern Ireland society?

No, no, at four in the morning I'm like him,

you're waking up, your backside's sweating,

your oxters are sweating, there's bubbles of sweat on the baldy head

and you're thinking, "What did I do with that paper yesterday?

"What's going on the street? When's the lawyers coming looking for us?"

So, today you can have Northern Ireland's randy politicians,

vice girls, corrupt officials and drug barons

over your Sunday toast and marmalade.

Back in the 1980s though, if we wanted sex and sleaze,

we'd have to climb up the Cavehill for a bit of light snogging,

surrounded by the glory of nature.

The odd thing is that compared to the headlines in today's Sunday papers,

the height of the Troubles seems like it was a more innocent time.

Back then I was being brought up as a Catholic,

an alter boy no less,

and in those days, Sunday's saw 95%

of all Catholics attending Mass every week.

But I've returned to find around a third of Northern Ireland Catholics

go to Mass regularly. After centuries of solid numbers,

that's a catastrophic fall in attendance.

For Catholics in Northern Ireland these days

is it more of a choice than an obligation, do you think?

Peter, it would still be an obligation to go to Mass on Sunday,

My own view is turn your back on Mass, you turn your back on Christ.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And maybe there's varying levels of faith

and that's part of our Catholic tradition.

We're not the Russian army where everybody has to go,

do what their told and not march in step.

So, how do you go about attracting people back into your church?

Or do you just have to observe and look after the flock that you do have?

An American sociologist looking at trends

as to why people don't go to Mass...

funny it's not the reasons like abuse scandals, contraception, divorce...

it's bad sermons is the biggest thing for keeping people away.

..to address the people of Jerusalem. An electrifying message...

A Catholic priest's sermon, you have to be like a NATO pilot,

you've got seven minutes to take off, select your target,

drop your load, turn around, wheels down and land...

if you don't, people are going to start pointing babies at you.

Seven minutes, that's your lot.

It's a warzone out there.

It is!

Although the Catholic Church must be worried about the number of locals

who prefer a lie-in to the Lord on a Sunday morning,

there are some new arrivals who can't wait to get church!

There's a massive number of Polish people now in Northern Ireland

who attend Mass in great numbers every Sunday,

and they're served by a cadre of padres

who fly in from Poland to serve their flock.

Evalina is a university lecturer

who does like to stop for a chat, outside Mass.

What's it like for you being a Polish Catholic in Northern Ireland,

how do the two camps compare?

Peter, let's put it like this, when I came here in 2006

and I went for my first Mass

and I saw boys in football tops in front of me

and girls in tracksuit bottoms!

And how would you compare Northern Irish Catholics

to Polish Catholics?

Are we different in how seriously we take it?

I think you adjust it a little bit to your lifestyle

and you don't take it as serious as Polish people do,

because some of the rules of the church are too strict for them.

Poland is like Ireland 20 years ago.

And have you talked about this to people of your age

-who are Northern Irish about that difference?

-Yes.

-What's their response?

-Their response is modern times are different,

we can't live like that any more...

Do you mean like people don't believe it in their hearts,

-they're just saying the words?

-Some people, yes.

-That's a terrible thing to say!

-I'm sorry.

-Unbelievable!

We welcome you over here, then you just run down

the poor old Northern Irish Catholics...

I don't know if they believe it in their hearts,

the way we live means we change the way we can commit ourselves to religion.

I feel a Eurovision Catholic contest coming on...

think of the songs!

But Sunday for Catholics in Northern Ireland

has never been just about nipping into the chapel in a nice scarf.

Many of the men rush to play some blood and snotters Gaelic sports,

and it must be said, that nowadays, the GAA

opens its doors to both communities.

The women and the girls on the other hand

are engaged in a much more competitive activity

All right, girls?

You eat...

you breathe...

you live feis's...

every Sunday, that's all you do...

On Sundays we get up

and we get all kitted out

and we come from feis and we dance from it starts

until it finishes, every Sunday.

Do you still go to Mass in the mornings

or is feis the main religion these days?

I'm ashamed to say but I don't go to Mass.

Skipping Mass is one thing,

but few here would dream of skipping a feis.

There's one almost every Sunday of the year.

This one's in Cookstown and every week hundreds of girls -

and some very brave wee boys, turn up for a jig and a joke.

It's a competitive world,

but one where just to be here, is to be a winner.

They want to please you, first and foremost

and it gives them confidence and builds their self-esteem,

so, it's not always all about winning.

How long have you been Irish dancing for?

-Two years.

-Two years.

-Two years.

And what about giggling, how long have you been giggling for?

-Seven!

-Seven years.

-Seven!

When I was growing up, the feis would have been almost exclusively Catholic,

but these are happier days for cross community knees up and arms straight.

In our school we have from both sides of the community dances...

it means these children are mixing with children from other backgrounds...

which is good for them...

Tell us a little about Sundays

where people might go into different churches

but they come together here... talk a wee bit about that for us?

Well, Joanne will you and I talk about that?

-Will we talk about that?

-Joanne and I are from different sides of the community,

so we are, and I mean without Irish dancing

I would never have met Joanne even though she lives

five miles down the road from me.

I never knew she existed until I met her through Irish dancing.

And the girls have become the best of friends.

They go to each other's houses and they meet for classes three

and four times a week, and only for that I would never have had the pleasure of meeting you, Joanne.

I can see you're both actually quite moved by that.

Has it made a big difference that you come together

on a Sunday like this?

It does, because you do see that it's a person, not just a religion,

somebody on the other side, and they're exactly the same as you.

Just because of the way that you were brought up

and your religion doesn't mean that Irish dancing should be a barrier.

-As a matter fact, it's broken down the barriers, so it has.

-Yes.

This is an amazing place.

It's not only sisters doing it for themselves,

but it's grannies and grandchildren, aunties.

It's a real sense of women of all ages coming together

on a Sunday afternoon, and it's not particularly about the competition,

or who will win the silverware, it's actually about communities,

about sharing an event together across generations.

PIPE MUSIC PLAYS

Everywhere you look there's wee girls leaping like Day-Glo gazelles

and, just occasionally, you spot a dazed-looking young male.

Aye, that's you, son.

And the Feis feels like Northern Irish women and girls

reclaiming Sunday afternoons for themselves.

It's a woman's day out, so it is.

We still have to go home and make the dinner, though.

It's better than peeling the spuds at home for dinner!

Is it important for you to spend time with the beloved daughter?

Och, it is, yeah. She's dancing three nights a week, at gymnastics,

so at night time you don't really get to spend much time with her,

but wee weekends away are good as well.

I love the fact that you will devote hours to an expensive sport

rather than peel spuds and watch Gaelic.

It's a terrible indictment of male sporting pursuits in this country,

and indeed of the lack of automatic spud peelers.

Well, there's a few beautiful restaurants along the way

so they can peel the spuds for us!

MUSIC: "Every Day Is Like Sunday" by Morrissey

# Every day is like Sunday... #

It strikes me that in these more enlightened times,

we put a lot of work into our day of rest in Ulster.

Be it religion observance, shopping with the family

or even a bit of dancing.

And for a prodigal son returning, it's both reassuringly familiar

and takes some getting used to.

Sundays have changed beyond recognition in Northern Ireland.

I feel a little bit like a sleeping beauty who nodded off

about three decades ago in a thicket of thorns, but have woken up,

balder and fatter, in a garden of variety.

Even though we're no longer forced to comply

with others' religious beliefs,

I think Northern Ireland should hold onto the idea

of Keep Sunday Special.

I don't mean in the religious sense.

Even the Sabbatarians would hesitate to padlock the swings nowadays.

But to make Sunday not like all the other days

when you're a consumer or a worker,

when you're encouraged to reflect, to recharge, to have fun,

to experiment. But Northern Ireland has already figured that out.

And for the ultimate proof,

let me take you the biggest Sunday night out in Ulster.

Ladies, put on your best high heels.

Gentlemen, put on HER best high heels, and join us

for the Sabbath spectacular that is Drag Queen Bingo.

CHEERING

For the last seven years we've been performing, dancing,

showing off, because this place just fills with the most excited people

you've ever seen in your entire life. And it still amazes me to this day.

We always say at the top of the show, expect the unexpected.

Because we are men in dresses and we are on stage,

dragging everything across that stage,

and if you walk in front of it, forget it.

-You're fair game?

-Mm-hmm.

Unless you're wearing Dolce & Gabbana, we'll let you away with it

but if you're dressed top-to-toe like a complete mess in a dress

you may keep on walking out that door.

Everyone, in your really camp voices, say 'Hi, Peter!' One, two, three.

-CROWD:

-Hi, Peter!

Hi!

CHEERING

-Ooh!

-Hello, you must be Rusty.

-Yes, hello, how are you?

-Nice to meet you.

-Great.

-Great.

So, listen, are you a bag of nerves on a big show night like this?

Absolutely not. It's just like a normal, everyday thing,

it's like going to sign on the dole, just normal.

When did Rusty arrive on the planet? Was it a gradual process?

No, it was a dare, really.

Tina Leggs Tantrum hosts Opportunity Frocks and I won that

and ever since then I've been performing,

working all over Northern Ireland and the UK, so it's brilliant.

Do you notice a big difference between a young person like yourself

as a gay man compared to, say, the good old bad old days, as it were.

-I'm not gay.

-Oh, you're not?

-No.

-Beg your pardon...

-I am!

MUSIC: "Dancing Queen" by ABBA

Not so long ago, being gay in Northern Ireland

was no laughing matter.

Well, I have three sons and I would die if it came to my home.

We don't talk about corruption and doubt like that.

That's all right for England, but not for Ireland.

We don't talk about corruption and doubt.

7 and 6, 76.

So even though Drag Queen Bingo doesn't take itself too seriously,

its existence in the centre of Belfast on a Sunday night of all nights

shows how much the old place has changed.

Tell us about the Gerry that was walking around the streets

of hard-faced Belfast trying to be a gay man, how easy was that?

Gerry being a gay man was easy cos everybody knew Gerry was a gay man

before our Gerry knew he was a gay man.

# Say you'll never let me go... #

Anywhere in Belfast, anywhere in Northern Ireland, anywhere I went,

I never found it difficult because I just love what I do.

-How you doing? I'm Peter.

-Nice to meet you. I'm Gordon/Trudy.

Lovely to see you.

Forward slash the woman/man of your dreams!

We've done straight venues, the gay venues and, in a way,

I like to think that we're pushing boundaries in our own way.

We're kind of like wonder women/men, letting people know we exist.

I suppose us mere mortals just kind of stare at you and wonder

whether we've got even a tiny bit of what you've guys have got

inside, you know what I mean?

We know the answer but we'll let you figure it out for yourself!

Living abroad, I've spent years explaining the joys

of Northern Ireland politics and history.

So it's refreshing to be in a club with three striking trannies,

where, to be honest, I really haven't a clue what's going on.

But it feels like a brash celebration of freedom and tolerance.

Everybody's very welcoming, especially in Belfast.

I know it sounds very cliche, but it definitely is the best audience

and you take that with you no matter where you go.

You're always going to have that traditional Belfast bit of craic.

# Say you'll never let me go

# Say you'll never let me go. #

CHEERING

So, Sundays, a day when faith has been peeling away from religion

like the back of an old mirror in which we used to see ourselves.

There's still many people on this day who commune with their God.

Sunday's also the day that Protestant and Catholics

go Irish dancing together.

Sunday's the day when you come down town and play Transvestite Bingo.

Now, when I left Northern Ireland nearly three decades ago,

it was a definitely the place to be from.

Today, rather movingly, it's a brilliant place to come back to.

# Oh, home

# Let me come home

# Home is wherever I'm with you

# Oh, home

# Let me come home

# Home is wherever I'm with you... #

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