Happy Saint George's Day

Like Saint Andrew's Day, Saint David's Day and Saint Patrick's Day, today ought to be a public holiday throughout the United Kingdom. Yes, that was a Labour manifesto commitment in 2017 and in 2019. But even then, I had been saying it for more than 20 years. Admittedly, that was also true of several other things that were in the Labour manifestos of 2017 and 2019. Saint David's Day, Saint Patrick's Day and Saint George's Day are all in these Islands' incomparable spring and early summer, while a public holiday throughout the United Kingdom on Saint Andrew's Day would at least go some way to precluding anything to do with Christmas before 1 December. Away with pointless celebrations of the mere fact that the banks were on holiday.

It is amazing how many people assume that because there is a legend about Saint George, then he himself must be a purely legendary figure. He is not. The Tomb of Saint George has become a shadow of its former self in his maternal hometown, which is now known as Lod, and which is the location of Israel's principal airport. But at what those involved insist is also his birthplace against the stronger claims of Cappadocia, it was once a major focus of unity between Christians and Muslims in devotion to the Patron Saint of Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt before, and as much as, the Patron Saint of England and a very large number of other places. But three quarters of those who practised that devotion were violently expelled in 1948. On what remains, see here.

Saint George's Flag goes back to the fourteenth century in England, although it is far older than that in many other places, having been the ensign of the Republic of Genoa from perhaps as early as the tenth century. The King of England had to pay an annual tribute to the Doge of Genoa for the protection that flying it afforded to English ships in the Mediterranean. But in England, it had long fallen into almost complete desuetude until 30 years ago.

Before Euro 96, although nearly everyone incorrectly called it something else, the English regarded the Union Flag as their national flag without any complication. It was not even a question. In my childhood, no one would have had any idea what Saint George's Flag was outside certain ecclesiastical circles that were obscure even in the 1980s, but around which I did happen to grow up. The 1966 World Cup Final is probably on YouTube. Check which flag most of the English fans were waving. The present Medieval revival was initiated 30 years later, which was in my adult lifetime, to sell bad beer to football's new middle-class audience, who were the only people who could still afford the tickets. Or the beer, for which we should substitute the products of the Taybeh Brewing Company. That revival predates devolution or anything like that. But we do have it now. It can be used to advantage.

For example, 1 April was the second anniversary of the deaths of James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman. While those British veterans were unarmed and delivering humanitarian aid, the Israeli Defense Forces bombed them three times to make sure that they were dead, using British-made Elbit Hermes 450 drones, and using intelligence from the over 600 nightly reconnaissance missions flown for the Israelis, yet free of charge to them, from RAF Akrotiri. From today, raise in their honour both the Union Flag and the Palestinian flag, flanking in England the flag of the Patron Saint both of England and of Palestine, as well as of the Lebanon where his statues were being demolished by the IDF in what one can only assume to be an expression of the same Judeo-Christian values that caused the IDF to desecrate and destroy the calvaire of the almost entirely Maronite Catholic village of Debel. The IDF claims to have replaced it, but that replacement has been by the Italians serving with UNIFIL. The UNIFIL against which the IDF has been known to deploy a chemical weapon.