St. George’s Day by Cambridge
England's National Day
When I came back to England from Easter vacation, I was greeted by this at the local supermarket:
The signs say Happy St. George’s Day, Wednesday 23 April and has a picture of a knight on a horse. I was with another MITer at the time and neither of us knew what St. George’s Day was. I whipped out my camera and we agreed that whatever it was, it would probably make a good blog entry.
Okay, I should probably have published this entry on 23rd April but I’m in the middle of exams. Very stressful. More on that later.
I looked this up in Wikipedia and turns out, St. George’s Day is England’s National Day. St. George usually depicted as a knight sitting on a horse, killing a dragon. Unfortunately, I don’t know any more than that. If anyone has anything to add, feel free to enlighten the rest of us in the comments below. Anyway, I was pretty curious to see what happens during St. George’s Day.
So on Wednesday, 23 April, I armed myself with my camera and was half expecting to see some sort of parade. But the only thing exciting I saw that day was that all the buildings and colleges were flying St. George’s flag. The wind was absent that day so if you can’t tell, the flag is white with a red cross on it.
Okay, I’m off to a tea party held by the local MIT Club.
MIT is the Best…
Interesting. I’d heard the story of Saint George and the Dragon, but I never knew his holiday was actually a big deal in England.
On a slightly less relevant note, this also reminds me of a quote by one of my favorite English authors, G.K. Chesterton: “Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.”
Snively is now officially off of the homepage! I took a screen shot to commemorate the occasion!
St. George’s day is generally celebrated on the weekend before or after the actual day as no one is really in the mood for a parade when they have to work the next day. parades are fairly cool, lots of people, music, army procession, religious undertone, patriotism on show, pubs will do lots, etc
st. george was a roman soldier who was given the option of christianity and death or conversion back to roman gods. lived in palestine (st. augustine came to britain-we think only st. patrick actually went to his patron country). in the romantic period he became associated with the story of the dragon.
and st. George’s flag = English flag
how does the mit-cambridge program work? do you have to apply to cambridge?
Interesting… it’s funny where holidays will pop up. I was really confused with Patriots Day last week, since I was thinking people were talking about Patriot Day… which is in September.
For more information about the Cambridge-MIT Exchange (CME) program, see http://web.mit.edu/cmi/ue/ and
http://web.mit.edu/studyabroad/