Dianne Abbott

[BrianW]

I celebrated St George's day and loved it. I'm also of fairly recent Irish Catholic ancestry.
My second cousin Miriam is mixed race and her grandmother was of Polish/Lithuanian parents.
We all like living here and being English.
I also ended up at a "proddy" primary school, but that another story.
I loved it.

I really don't understand why people try to pigeon hole

Who's pigeonholing?

It's just a fact. From the time of Henry VIII, this country, England, had no tradition of celebrating saints' days. Absolutely none. As I said, my memory goes back a long way and when I was a boy St George's Day was simply not celebrated. Indeed, it was barely mentioned. So there is no tradition. What we have now is something created in recent years. If people enjoy it, fine, but please do not pretend it is something we always did until nasty lefties somehow 'stopped' us. No one wants to stop it!

England was once so supremely self-confident that it saw no need to celebrate itself. It no longer is. As one of my history teachers said (warning us that other countries, notably the USA, were different) no one used to care if you used the Union Jack to polish your shoes. At the time he said it, this was true. If there was a focus of national sentiment, it was the Queen.

Catholic countries have a completely different culture, and the celebration of major and relevant saints' days is the norm. This is neither better nor worse, it's just different. This helps explain why St. Patrick's Day is a much bigger deal than St. George's Day - or indeed St. Andrew's Day or St. David's Day.

 

[mackenzie]

Who's pigeonholing?

It's just a fact. From the time of Henry VIII, this country, England, had no tradition of celebrating saints' days. Absolutely none. As I said, my memory goes back a long way and when I was a boy St George's Day was simply not celebrated. Indeed, it was barely mentioned. So there is no tradition. What we have now is something created in recent years. If people enjoy it, fine, but please do not pretend it is something we always did until nasty lefties somehow 'stopped' us. No one wants to stop it!

England was once so supremely self-confident that it saw no need to celebrate itself. It no longer is. As one of my history teachers said (warning us that other countries, notably the USA, were different) no one used to care if you used the Union Jack to polish your shoes. At the time he said it, this was true. If there was a focus of national sentiment, it was the Queen.

Catholic countries have a completely different culture, and the celebration of major and relevant saints' days is the norm. This is neither better nor worse, it's just different. This helps explain why St. Patrick's Day is a much bigger deal than St. George's Day - or indeed St. Andrew's Day or St. David's Day.

Where did I say "nasty lefties want to stop it?"
I didn't.
I was simply saying that your perception of St George's day, and all that might entail, could be different from that of others.

 

[blueinsa]

Where did I say "nasty lefties want to stop it?"
I didn't.
I was simply saying that your perception of St George's day, and all that might entail, could be different from that of others.

Another class war warrior mack.

I read some posts in here with the exact same enjoyment I read some of the shite on RAWK or Redcafe towards us.

Pure bile spewed out, non stop.

 

[meltonblue]

I celebrated St George's day and loved it. I'm also of fairly recent Irish Catholic ancestry.
My second cousin Miriam is mixed race and her grandmother was of Polish/Lithuanian parents.
We all like living here and being English.
I also ended up at a "proddy" primary school, but that another story.
I loved it.

I really don't understand why people try to pigeon hole

How did you celebrate it? Genuinely curious as I don’t know if there’s anything traditional people are supposed to do for it or anything.

It’s my brother in laws birthday as well, that’s the only way I remember its St George’s Day!

 

[mackenzie]

How did you celebrate it? Genuinely curious as I don’t know if there’s anything traditional people are supposed to do for it or anything.

It’s my brother in laws birthday as well, that’s the only way I remember its St George’s Day!

Raised a glass :-)

 

[meltonblue]

Raised a glass :-)

Ah. In which case I celebrated it too! :)

 

[Metal Biker]

Poor St Edmund the Martyr...

 

[Vic]

The problem with the Union Jack is that it was appropriated decades ago by a series of vile fascist and racist organisations, starting the National Front in the 1970s, and has never been thoroughly reclaimed as a flag that represents everyone. How you sort that out I do not know. The London Olympics almost got us there, but this country seems a very different place now from the days of that brief moment of enlightenment and hope.

As for St George's Day, this is (or rather was) a predominantly Protestant country with no real tradition of celebrating saints' days. (This is why, for example, we don't celebrate Corpus Christi, and only have a few limited and local events on Shrove Tuesday, not general carnivals.) So setting up St George's Day parades and so on is artificial, rather than organic, and there is only limited interest. When I was a boy absolutely no one celebrated the day, and yet this was a time when 'traditional Englishness/Britishness' was firmly in place, racism was common, many people actually went to church and 'woke' was something you did in the morning.

St George? Turkish mercenary. Didn't even slay a dragon, or come to England.

 

[meltonblue]

Poor St Edmund the Martyr...

Used to be Edward too didn’t it?

 

[Metal Biker]

Used to be Edward too didn’t it?

Not to my knowledge