St George Day

[peterd]

belated happy St George Day every one anything going on in your area over the weekend

[gardener]

Wasn't it yesterday?

[peterd]

Wasn't it yesterday?

yep but i forgot and nobody elses poted anything as if we should be ashamed of celerbrating it, so better late than never

[snoopysue]

I never remeber when St George's day is, handicap of being brought up in Wales I suppose!

[Antie Em]

Here's what was happening in Dudley - Annual St George's Day event : http://www.stourbridgenews.co.uk/news/8 ... ebrations/

[SRD]

It's difficult for us to forget, we have three birthdays in the family and close friends, but what with all that I'm afraid the Turkish Knight tends to get a bit left out.

[peterd]

It's difficult for us to forget, we have three birthdays in the family and close friends, but what with all that I'm afraid the Turkish Knight tends to get a bit left out.

well for many concils now its not the Pr think to do celerbrate being english

[SRD]

I must admit I think of myself as British not English. As so much of the work here shows many of us come from a wide variety of origins and have loyalties beyond these shores. One advantage of thinking myself British means that I'm happy to celebrate St. George, St. David, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, Rabbie Burns et al without a twinge of national conscience. As far as local councils are concerned; if it is there job to put on celebrations of any nature using our money (and it is a moot point as to whether they should be anyway), money that could be put to so many more important uses, it ought to be down to the people served by that council to choose who or what is celebrated, and whose definitions of what is right or not are applied.

[peterd]

thats the difference then i look at my self as english first then british

[Rob]

Who was St George? He seems to me an obscure figure who killed a dragon!!
Other countries such as Spain and Bulgaria seem to have more infinity with him than the English.
I think of St George and i think not of England but The National Front!!
Why is that?
The patron saint of England?
There is nothing intrinsically English about the Saint or the day itself.
If England is going to celebrate all that it is good for, one needs to find a figure that both represents that and that only.

[gardener]

So who do you want, Rob? We could could revert to Edward the Confessor as patron saint maybe?
Personally I always say that I am English - I have yet to find any member of my family that didn't come from central England. I'm happy with St George and don't think of the National Front at all. I don't think St Andrew had much connection to Scotland, did he?

[peterd]

well we could use st patrick as he was english, st david was welsh we could maybe borrow him ? st andrew greek ? as was St nickolas i wonder how may national saints were actually born in the country, and the country should celerbrate its saints day this would stop any organisation from hijacking it.

here the netherlands ones rob two out of three are english


The patrons of the Netherlands are:

•Bavo of Ghent, born near Liège, Belgium
•Plechelm, Born Anglo-Saxon from Northumbria, England
•Willibrord of Echternach, born in Northumbria

[snoopysue]

Who was St George? He seems to me an obscure figure who killed a dragon!!
Other countries such as Spain and Bulgaria seem to have more infinity with him than the English.
I think of St George and i think not of England but The National Front!!
Why is that?
The patron saint of England?
There is nothing intrinsically English about the Saint or the day itself.
If England is going to celebrate all that it is good for, one needs to find a figure that both represents that and that only.

I don't see it as a day to celebrate St George, but more of a day to celebrate England!

[Annie]

thats the difference then i look at my self as english first then british

So do I Peterd.

Annie

[SRD]

Hmmm, patron Saints of England are tricky, do we look pre 1066; Lots of useful Saints, including, as far as this forum is concerned, St Offa

the most powerful of the Anglo Saxon Kings, Offa, is mainly remembered today because of "Offa's Dyke" - a long defensive trench he built to keep out the Welsh. He produced some fine coins (including a copy of an Abbasid Dinar which he thought had the right sort of look) and also persuaded the Pope to set up a new Archdiocese based on Lichfield which covered all the Midlands and East Anglia.

but pre 1066 most of England was split into separate realms so should we look post 1066; there's Saint Aelred of Rievaulx,

Rievaulx was founded in 1131 - Yorkshire's first Cistercian abbey. Its third Abbot - Saint Aelred - was one of the leading European ecclesiastics of the 1100s both in terms of holiness, scholarship and statesmanship. He was also responsible for building many of the abbey and monastery buildings whose ruins can still be seen today.

Or maybe Saint Thomas a Becket

Lord Chancellor of Plantagenet Henry II's England, and later Archbishop of Canterbury, who was famously murdered (beheaded and brained or vice-versa) in his cathedral by four knights plus retainers on 29 December 1170.
Becket was not a popular, saintly or even particularly nice person, but the manner of his death fired up huge public interest, and within two years he had become a Euro Celebrity and was canonised. Graphic representations of his killing appeared in places as far away as Sicily (Mosaic in Monreale Cathedral), Spoleto (Umbria - fresco in the church of Saints John and Paul) and the pilgrimage churches of France such as Chartres (an entire window sponsored by the Guild of Tanners dedicated to Becket's life), as well as many English churches. His tomb and shrine in Canterbury Cathedral and the dozens of Limoge Chasses containing Becket "relics" gave new meaning to the commercial possibilities of pilgrimage and medieval celebritydom.
Before his fateful return to England, Becket had sheltered in Sens, then been put up for three years by the monks of the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny, in Burgundy and whilst there had dumped on Henry big time from the pulpit of the Abbaye Ste-Madeleine in nearby Vézelay.

Anyone else?