The holiest thing our nation has

I find 2.30am works best to ensure the maximum feeling of unreality. That gives you a little while to realise you can't find the beanie and gloves (because I know you think it's cold when you get up in the morning regularly - but it's a different form of cold when the sun has been down for hours and is still some distance from getting up).

Yes, please, get yourself along to the Dawn Service. It's not really a big effort - considering the effort that it commemorates, made nearly 100 years ago. Yes, compared to that, setting the alarm three hours earlier than usual is no biggie. We are - mainly - alive, safe and warm.

We are not taking instructions from people who do not know what they are doing. And if we are taking instructions from the careless, their errors are not costing us our lives.

So, yes, the Dawn Service, that moment in the quotidian life of laidback Australia, is probably the holiest thing we have. It unites us, Christian, atheist, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, Salvo, Jedi. It's what I imagine places of worship will be - except for most of us, the Dawn Service will be outside, in our mild winter.

When you go, you will be with thousands of others, silent, blinking from tiredness, the odd smile of mateship since, in most respects, this is precisely what Anzac Day honours. We know we are there to honour the dead and the lucky living. Not one of us is here to praise war.

There are few jokes; and even fewer are those who bring that constant companion, the take-away coffee cup. It looks a little bit like Yom Kippur for the entire nation; no-one has eaten since the night before and maybe we think eating would be breaking the rules. For those of you who don't know, Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement, where the observant fast from sunset to sunset. This year, it starts on Friday September 13 and the next day both political parties will be atoning for the havoc they wreak on each other and on us. That will never happen.

I used to go to the Dawn Service each year - partly because my job required it but partly because I love the commemoration, the anniversary. There is not a parent anywhere who doesn't remember birthdays but I also remember death days. When my father died. When my mother died. When my sister died. They mark the passing of my life, too. And Anzac Day was the death day for so many.

The Cenotaph in Sydney holds the biggest religious service - there are usually thousands of us, clustered around the memorial in Sydney's Martin Place, whether it is wet or dry. In all the years I reported on this event, I could never find a single person who was there because they thought this event glorified war, although over the years, some mentioned that, just sometimes, politicians liked to be in those photo opportunities in Afghanistan or Iraq. And, in my many years as a reporter, I never interviewed a person who said they thought war was great. Or even good. Just sometimes necessary and often that necessity was of our own making.

I hope that every single Australian politician is at a Dawn Service on Thursday. Every single one. It is that moment when you fade into the crowd. You do not have a flak jacket, you are not special, you are just in a polar fleece like the rest of us; and a beanie if you've found it. And gloves if you've remembered them (and next year, you'll definitely remember them). Hey, if you know a politician who didn't get up well before dawn, drop me a line. I'd like to ask them why.

No, what the majority of those of us who go to Dawn Services want to do is to remember the dead and to honour the memory of what it takes to sacrifice your life for a cause you think much bigger than you are as an individual. But when we go to Dawn Services, we sometimes do the religious thing and deny ourselves the right to question, to truly think about what happened at Anzac Cove. Those young men took orders from people who had no idea what they were doing. It still makes me so angry. That's my number one emotion about Anzac Day. Anger. No tears, just fury. Partly because I know it still happens, young men and women dying because of the decisions of those who are in charge.

We can't bring ourselves to say no to anything Anzac. It's the religion we have in this country with no religion.

■ Follow Jenna Price on Twitter or contact her via email.