st guiness day...

[pagey3]

does anyone else find it a little sad that there is so much hoo-haa about st patricks day, but barely any celebration for our own patron saint st george?

one girl I work with is 20 and she didn't even know what st georges day was! why are we celebrating someone else's national pride and not our own? I suspect if we tried to we would be called racist and told to stop celebrating as we were offending the non english...(much as in a town in north london the local council took down the union jack from their town hall after a non-english area of the community complained that it was discriminatory against those in the community who weren't british!)

[Kay]

DMA. It was the tradition on St Davids day for the men to drink ale and the women tea. Along with these they ate Bara Brith and Tesiun Lap. As kids we used to love the bread and cake given out in school but we had milk instead of tea or ale,not fair:-( Nowadays Brains Dark is the choice of ale.

[SteveD]

To celebrate St David's day, you could chose from one of these:

http://www.wda.co.uk/index.cfm/developing_your_business/welsh_agrifood_sector/food_wales/press_release/may_2004/vineyards_join_forces_to_celebrate_welsh_wine_week/en5267

(one available from here:

http://www.tesco.com/winestore/controller.aspx?Ne=4&sid=1018A9B19B36&N=4294967173&Nr=70002

or this:

http://www.whisky-online.com/acatalog/Welsh_Whisky.html

Iechyd da!

[Bordeaux]

APRIL 23rd is also Shakespeare's Birthday, and agree should be for England Bank Holiday with the Queen's Birthday on the 21st April, its up to people to make it, In France in May there's weeks of festivals for Joan of Arc both the great battle of Orleans May 8th and in Rouen for anniversary of Burning which was 1431..St Georges Chapel Windsor is where there will be a great celebration on April 23rd Service for Queen's 80th B'day.

[coprinus00]

Saint This and Saint That. It's totally medieval and daft and meaningless so why bother?

[pagey3]

yep wowo - I couldn't agree more that st paddys day is only celebrated so excessively because of guinnes - really it should be renamed st guinness day!

I know saints are a bit medieval and outdated, and the reason for the original post wasn't to moan or grumble or say we shouldn't celebrate paddys day, (or st davids for that matter) it was more that I couldn't believe a well educated 20 year old didn't know what or who st george was, and then on mentioning it discovered other people either didn't know or really weren't bothered! I like being english and would like to celebrate it - it doesn't have to be a bank holiday (although it would be nice!) but perhaps a good old english brewery should cash in on it as guinness has!

I knew patrick was english (why not from wigan indeed?!) but I didn't realise about st george's multi-cultural ties - how interesting I will certainly find out more about that thank you :-)

[Bodmass]

<DIV>Just in case anyone else is missing the obvious on St Georges day, It is a catholic feast day for a catholic saint in a protestant and historically virulently anti-catholic country.