Once a year on the 23rd of April there is an attempt to try and inject some sort of cultural feeling into St George’s Day.
This probably stems from a feeling of missing out as in Wales, March 1st St David’s Day in modern times has become a day of Eisteddfods in schools and children wearing what passes for national costume. In truth a lot of this is a reimagining, courtesy of a 19th Century lady whose name sounds anything but Welsh, Augusta Waddington. The Englishness is a bit ironic as Big Ben in London is named after her husband Benjamin Hall!
She was a great patron of the Welsh arts, living at Llanover Hall in Monmouthshire, which was not a Welsh speaking part of Wales. Basically she reinvented a number of Welsh traditions which have caught on, including the crowning of the bard.
All in all it has been a great success, especially when you consider that St David really did, or so it is rumoured, travel and work among the Welsh.
The Scots don’t do so badly with St Andrew’s Day, on the 30th of November being a bank holiday, true they have odd ceilidhs, somebody somewhere will pick up a microphone and belt out a couple of traditional ballads.
Indeed, my first evening after being posted to Prestwick from Gatwick was St Andrew’s Day, spent as a guest in the RAFA (Royal Air Force Association) club. Being an Andrew, everyone insisted on shaking my hand and buying me a drink. As far as I could understand, drinking was part of the St Andrew’s celebrations.
Mind you, being the first apostle, it’s highly unlikely that St Andrew put aside his nets, left off following his messiah around Galilee and took time out to go to Scotland, as in all likelihood, he’d never hear of the place and Hadrian had yet to build his wall, cutting off the Scots.
The big success story is St Patrick’s Day. It’s all there, holiday, ceilidhs, recitals, drinking, silly costumes but and this is the but that outshines all others, it has been exported very successfully, to such an extent that it is celebrated among Americans, even those with no family links to Ireland.
Every box is ticked with Patrick as although he was originally Welsh , he did wander around Ireland doing good works.
It all falls apart when we get to England. It’s hardly celebrated at all, there’s no real tradition, Victorian invention or otherwise, and as ever in the pursuit of money and commerce the English are too busy working even to notice the date.
Nobody can claim that he was in any way English as he’s also the patron saint of Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Russia, Ethiopia and also in the Spanish regions of Aragon and Catalonia.
In reality, George was a 3rd Century Roman soldier, probably Greek speaking from an area covered by part of modern Turkey and Northern Syria.
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