Ireland's national day is St Patrick's Day, celebrated every 17th March with copious amounts of drinking, and the wearing of the shamrock.
Wales's national day is St David's Day, celebrated every 1st March (except 2006 when it was celebrated on 2nd March due to 1st March being Ash Wednesday) with copious amounts of singing, and the wearing of the daffodil.
Scotland's national day is St Andrew's Day, celebrated every 30th November with copious amounts of anti-English racism, and the wearing of the thistle (which must be a bit painful).
And England's national day is St George's Day, celebrated every 23rd April (this Thursday), and the wearing of the red rose.
But St George's Day is often not as celebrated as the others, but not because the English are less patriotic than the Celts (far from it), but merely because of the extreme political correctness of England rulers, who think that the waving of England's flag and the celebrations of quintessentially English things - such as Shakespeare, who was born and also died on St George's Day - is somehow "racist" and that ethnic minorities living in England may somehow be "offended."
But this year is different. On Saturday, two days after St George's Day, London is hosting several events to celebrate all things English, thanks to the Mayor.
These will include readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets at the Globe Theatre to mark the 400th anniversary of their publication, real-ale tastings and an English folk music concert in Trafalgar Square, while the Mayor will take a ceremonial tour of the capital in a London bus.
The whole city is expected to be decked in the Cross of St George – with no threat of getting into trouble with the authorities, as it will be with the full authority of the Mayor.
Many people over the years have tried to define what they believe is Englishness.
Former Prime Minister John Major (who was PM between 1990 and 1997), a cricket fan, said that the essence of England consisted in warm beer, the shades lengthening on county cricket pitches, and old maids cycling through the morning mist to communion.
But London Mayor Boris Johnson, who organised the forthcoming St George's Day events, says in this article that one thing above all defines England - the English language.
Our language is England's greatest gift to the world... and this is the week to celebrate it
By Boris Johnson
19th April 2009
Daily Mail
English roses: Two young ladies celebrating St George's Day last year in Birmingham
A couple of weeks ago City Hall in London put out a modest Press announcement about our plans for St George’s Day – and we couldn’t believe the reaction.
The phones went wild. The emails and the letters started to swamp our response teams.
People started crossing the road to shake my hand, pumping it up and down and thanking me with embarrassing fervour.
I felt like some Texan prospector who has idly whacked his pickaxe on some piece of unpromising ground and then stood back in amazement before a great gusher of erupting oil.
Reclaiming the flag: The London Mayor has been inundated with support for his plans to celebrate St George's Day with a major concert in Trafalgar Square
As I studied some of the emails I got a sense of pent-up longing, of people who were yearning to reclaim the English flag from the extremists.
They didn’t want anything to do with the far Right. They deeply disliked the BNP.
They didn’t want to cock a snook at the Scots, and they didn’t have any particular resentment of the Welsh or the Irish.
They certainly didn’t have any hostility towards St Patrick’s Day, or Diwali or any of the other high days and holy days we mark in the great multi-ethnic metropolis.
They just felt that London was not only the capital of Britain, and of the United Kingdom, but also the capital of England.
After decades of watching ceremonies and festivals in honour of just about everyone, they wanted to celebrate the genius of England on the day of England’s patron saint.
In a simple, joyful and unthreatening way – in a way that included all the communities that live here – they wanted a day to announce their pride in this country and all the things it has given the world.
Now at this point we must be careful, because when politicians try to analyse the particular genius of England, they notoriously come unstuck.
In 1924, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin made a lyrical speech extolling the things he believed were the imperishable and eternal about England.
Genius: William Shakespeare, who did the most to mobilise English, also has his birthday on Thursday
He spoke of the cry of the corncrake, and the tinkle of the anvil in the country smithy, and the sight of a ploughman and his team of horses coming over the brow of a hill – a sight, he said, that would exist as long as England was a land.
Well, I bet there is not a single reader who has heard the tinkle of an anvil in a smithy recently, still less seen a ploughman with his horses – and you’d have to get up pretty early these days to hear a corncrake.
John Major fared little better when he announced that the essence of England consisted in warm beer, the shades lengthening on county cricket pitches, and old maids cycling through the morning mist to communion.
Everybody speedily pointed out that people were switching from warm beer to lager, that many county cricket grounds now had floodlights, and what with churches being deconsecrated all over the country, the sight of an old maid cycling to communion – with or without the morning mist – was becoming about as common as the cry of the corncrake.
Asked to define the genius of the country, both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have desperately mumbled something about the NHS.
To which people have said: ‘Yes, the health service is a wonderful institution, but wasn’t England a magical country before 1948?’
So what is it, my friends, that makes up the special genius of England? What is it that people will be coming out to celebrate on Thursday and then again, I hope, in Trafalgar Square on Saturday?
Some people say it is all about democracy, and a sense of fair play, and a love of gardening – and all that is true.
Nothing to celebrate: Pubs selling honest English ale are shutting down
But they have some decent gardens in Holland, the Danes have always seemed to me to have a keen sense of fair play and the Icelandic parliament is probably older than our own.
Some say it is about pubs, and an obsession with the weather, and yes, it is true that there is something very English about the beery breath of a pub on a hot bank holiday and we certainly like to bang on about the weather.
But can these really be said to amount to the quintessence of Englishness, when so many pubs are closing down, and when our weather patterns – far from being unique – are actually the same as those of Ireland, Holland, New Zealand and most of Northern France?
Some say it is all about embarrassment and irony and our special gift of humour, and again, there is something in that.
Many foreign beaches will be treated this summer to the immortal sight of the Englishman trying to change into his swimming trunks with the help of a towel, and falling over.
But then you look at Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, and you wonder whether we are quite as full of embarrassment and gentle irony as we once were.
So what is it, then? What is the supreme gift of the English to the rest of the world? The answer, dear reader, is under your nose.
The genius of England resides to some extent in all the things we have so far discussed.
But if there is one thing that marks us out and defines us, it is the language, the greatest, the most fertile and the most stunningly successful language the world has ever seen.
The Germans may beat us at music; the Italians have the edge in painting – but the English beat all comers at poetry, and that is why it is right that we should celebrate St George’s Day in April.
It is not only the month that inspired Chaucer and T.S.Eliot. On Thursday we also mark the birth of William Shakespeare, the man who mobilised that language more effectively than anyone before or since.
So why is English so formidable? Why does it knock Mandarin into a cocked hat?
Because it has twice as many words as either French or German.
There are 500,000 words in the dictionary, and that is because it is a confluence of the two great streams of Romance and Anglo-Saxon.
It is a mongrel language, a language that shamelessly and brilliantly continues to absorb imports from around the world. That is why it is so fitting that St George is himself an import. Like my ancestors, it turns out he was a Turk, and it is testament to the generosity of the English that we have made him our saint.
According to Gibbon, he had nothing to do with a dragon, but was a Cappadocian merchant who made a fortune selling bacon to the Roman army.
What could be more appropriate? Napoleon said the English were a nation of shopkeepers.
He meant it as an insult. We take it as a compliment. It is that spirit of small-business entrepreneurship that encouraged St George to flog his bacon to the Romans and will lead this country out of recession.
So come on out and celebrate the multi-faceted genius of this country, and cry God for Harry, England and St George the seller of bacon!
dailymail.co.uk
Wales's national day is St David's Day, celebrated every 1st March (except 2006 when it was celebrated on 2nd March due to 1st March being Ash Wednesday) with copious amounts of singing, and the wearing of the daffodil.
Scotland's national day is St Andrew's Day, celebrated every 30th November with copious amounts of anti-English racism, and the wearing of the thistle (which must be a bit painful).
And England's national day is St George's Day, celebrated every 23rd April (this Thursday), and the wearing of the red rose.
But St George's Day is often not as celebrated as the others, but not because the English are less patriotic than the Celts (far from it), but merely because of the extreme political correctness of England rulers, who think that the waving of England's flag and the celebrations of quintessentially English things - such as Shakespeare, who was born and also died on St George's Day - is somehow "racist" and that ethnic minorities living in England may somehow be "offended."
But this year is different. On Saturday, two days after St George's Day, London is hosting several events to celebrate all things English, thanks to the Mayor.
These will include readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets at the Globe Theatre to mark the 400th anniversary of their publication, real-ale tastings and an English folk music concert in Trafalgar Square, while the Mayor will take a ceremonial tour of the capital in a London bus.
The whole city is expected to be decked in the Cross of St George – with no threat of getting into trouble with the authorities, as it will be with the full authority of the Mayor.
Many people over the years have tried to define what they believe is Englishness.
Former Prime Minister John Major (who was PM between 1990 and 1997), a cricket fan, said that the essence of England consisted in warm beer, the shades lengthening on county cricket pitches, and old maids cycling through the morning mist to communion.
But London Mayor Boris Johnson, who organised the forthcoming St George's Day events, says in this article that one thing above all defines England - the English language.
Our language is England's greatest gift to the world... and this is the week to celebrate it
By Boris Johnson
19th April 2009
Daily Mail
English roses: Two young ladies celebrating St George's Day last year in Birmingham
A couple of weeks ago City Hall in London put out a modest Press announcement about our plans for St George’s Day – and we couldn’t believe the reaction.
The phones went wild. The emails and the letters started to swamp our response teams.
People started crossing the road to shake my hand, pumping it up and down and thanking me with embarrassing fervour.
I felt like some Texan prospector who has idly whacked his pickaxe on some piece of unpromising ground and then stood back in amazement before a great gusher of erupting oil.
Reclaiming the flag: The London Mayor has been inundated with support for his plans to celebrate St George's Day with a major concert in Trafalgar Square
As I studied some of the emails I got a sense of pent-up longing, of people who were yearning to reclaim the English flag from the extremists.
They didn’t want anything to do with the far Right. They deeply disliked the BNP.
They didn’t want to cock a snook at the Scots, and they didn’t have any particular resentment of the Welsh or the Irish.
They certainly didn’t have any hostility towards St Patrick’s Day, or Diwali or any of the other high days and holy days we mark in the great multi-ethnic metropolis.
They just felt that London was not only the capital of Britain, and of the United Kingdom, but also the capital of England.
After decades of watching ceremonies and festivals in honour of just about everyone, they wanted to celebrate the genius of England on the day of England’s patron saint.
In a simple, joyful and unthreatening way – in a way that included all the communities that live here – they wanted a day to announce their pride in this country and all the things it has given the world.
Now at this point we must be careful, because when politicians try to analyse the particular genius of England, they notoriously come unstuck.
In 1924, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin made a lyrical speech extolling the things he believed were the imperishable and eternal about England.
Genius: William Shakespeare, who did the most to mobilise English, also has his birthday on Thursday
He spoke of the cry of the corncrake, and the tinkle of the anvil in the country smithy, and the sight of a ploughman and his team of horses coming over the brow of a hill – a sight, he said, that would exist as long as England was a land.
Well, I bet there is not a single reader who has heard the tinkle of an anvil in a smithy recently, still less seen a ploughman with his horses – and you’d have to get up pretty early these days to hear a corncrake.
John Major fared little better when he announced that the essence of England consisted in warm beer, the shades lengthening on county cricket pitches, and old maids cycling through the morning mist to communion.
Everybody speedily pointed out that people were switching from warm beer to lager, that many county cricket grounds now had floodlights, and what with churches being deconsecrated all over the country, the sight of an old maid cycling to communion – with or without the morning mist – was becoming about as common as the cry of the corncrake.
Asked to define the genius of the country, both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have desperately mumbled something about the NHS.
To which people have said: ‘Yes, the health service is a wonderful institution, but wasn’t England a magical country before 1948?’
So what is it, my friends, that makes up the special genius of England? What is it that people will be coming out to celebrate on Thursday and then again, I hope, in Trafalgar Square on Saturday?
Some people say it is all about democracy, and a sense of fair play, and a love of gardening – and all that is true.
Nothing to celebrate: Pubs selling honest English ale are shutting down
But they have some decent gardens in Holland, the Danes have always seemed to me to have a keen sense of fair play and the Icelandic parliament is probably older than our own.
Some say it is about pubs, and an obsession with the weather, and yes, it is true that there is something very English about the beery breath of a pub on a hot bank holiday and we certainly like to bang on about the weather.
But can these really be said to amount to the quintessence of Englishness, when so many pubs are closing down, and when our weather patterns – far from being unique – are actually the same as those of Ireland, Holland, New Zealand and most of Northern France?
Some say it is all about embarrassment and irony and our special gift of humour, and again, there is something in that.
Many foreign beaches will be treated this summer to the immortal sight of the Englishman trying to change into his swimming trunks with the help of a towel, and falling over.
But then you look at Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, and you wonder whether we are quite as full of embarrassment and gentle irony as we once were.
So what is it, then? What is the supreme gift of the English to the rest of the world? The answer, dear reader, is under your nose.
The genius of England resides to some extent in all the things we have so far discussed.
But if there is one thing that marks us out and defines us, it is the language, the greatest, the most fertile and the most stunningly successful language the world has ever seen.
The Germans may beat us at music; the Italians have the edge in painting – but the English beat all comers at poetry, and that is why it is right that we should celebrate St George’s Day in April.
It is not only the month that inspired Chaucer and T.S.Eliot. On Thursday we also mark the birth of William Shakespeare, the man who mobilised that language more effectively than anyone before or since.
So why is English so formidable? Why does it knock Mandarin into a cocked hat?
Because it has twice as many words as either French or German.
There are 500,000 words in the dictionary, and that is because it is a confluence of the two great streams of Romance and Anglo-Saxon.
It is a mongrel language, a language that shamelessly and brilliantly continues to absorb imports from around the world. That is why it is so fitting that St George is himself an import. Like my ancestors, it turns out he was a Turk, and it is testament to the generosity of the English that we have made him our saint.
According to Gibbon, he had nothing to do with a dragon, but was a Cappadocian merchant who made a fortune selling bacon to the Roman army.
What could be more appropriate? Napoleon said the English were a nation of shopkeepers.
He meant it as an insult. We take it as a compliment. It is that spirit of small-business entrepreneurship that encouraged St George to flog his bacon to the Romans and will lead this country out of recession.
So come on out and celebrate the multi-faceted genius of this country, and cry God for Harry, England and St George the seller of bacon!
dailymail.co.uk
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