1916-2016: Does anyone actually know what this is?

The filamentous achenes of the
dandelion puff ball

Ah, 'tis upon us. A terrible ugly thing is born. We don't even know what it is. It's just, well, it's a thing. I mean, we couldn't do nothing about it. We couldn't really make it about identity, because the nordies would have got uppity about it. We couldn't just make it about commemoration, because that's morbid and we don't do poppies. We couldn't make it a celebration because, well, you know, the shooting and all that.

It wasn't even a military victory, but a military defeat. It didn't result in independence, just a perpetuated dominion that manifested itself in a face saving drift towards non-dependence in 1949, preceded by a long sequence of guerrilla actions, a civil war, and economic emergencies (including a sovereign debt default) that were both unseemly and undignified.

Nationalism in Ireland in 2015

A debate has begun in Ireland on how the country should celebrate Easter 2016, one hundred years after the Easter Rising.  Thus far it has taken the shape of an external-relativist debate, particularly in relation to the UK; and a peace-violence debate, and whether violent uprising should be celebrated, especially given the question about what it actually achieved.  The official launch video in November was almost universally panned for seeking to look to the future (with the British Queen's visit seemingly the starting point) and almost completely ignoring the Rising itself, and the proclamation of independence.  I have some sympathy with the designers of the video; if we look deep enough into the dark past of history, there is some danger that the country may fall back into it.