St George's Day: Why England Should Roar on the 23rd of April

On the 23rd of April, something quietly remarkable happens across England. A few pubs hang a flag. A handful of councils organise something modest in a market square. Some people wear a red rose. And then the day passes, largely unmarked, largely uncelebrated, in the country that claims St George as its own.

It is the most undercelebrated national day in Europe. And it is a national embarrassment.

The Irish fill the world with green on St Patrick's Day. The Scots have reclaimed St Andrew's Day with growing pride and confidence. The Welsh make St David's Day a genuine statement of national identity. England — the largest nation in Britain, the country that once ruled the largest empire in human history — lets its own patron saint's day pass like any other Tuesday.

That ends here.

Who Was George?

George was a Roman soldier, born in the third century AD to a Christian family in Cappadocia — modern day Turkey. He served in the Roman army, rising to the rank of Tribune, a senior military officer of considerable standing. When the Emperor Diocletian launched his great persecution of Christians in 303 AD, George refused to renounce his faith and refused to participate in the persecution of his fellow Christians.

He was tortured. He refused to recant. He was tortured again. He refused again. According to the accounts that survive, he endured a catalogue of torments over the course of eight days before he was finally beheaded on the 23rd of April 303 AD, outside the city of Nicomedia.

He was a soldier who chose his conscience over his career, his faith over his life, and his God over his Emperor. The Church made him a saint almost immediately. His cult spread with extraordinary speed across the Christian world — through the Byzantine Empire, through the Crusader states, through Western Europe.

He arrived in England on the lips of Crusaders.

How He Became England's Saint

The connection between George and England deepened over centuries. The Venerable Bede mentions his cult in the eighth century. King Richard I — the Lionheart — placed his army under George's protection during the Third Crusade in the 1190s. Edward III founded the Order of the Garter in 1348, placing it under George's patronage — the most prestigious order of chivalry in England, which still exists today, with its chapel at Windsor Castle still dedicated to St George.

By the time Henry V stood before his troops at Agincourt in 1415 — outnumbered, deep in French territory, facing an army several times the size of his own — the cry that went up was *God for Harry, England, and St George.* Shakespeare wrote those words four hundred years ago and they still resonate because they capture something true about what George meant to the English: the patron of the soldier who stands firm against impossible odds, who chooses courage over calculation, who fights because it is right rather than because it is safe.

George was the saint of the outnumbered. No wonder England loved him.

The Dragon

Of course there is a dragon.

The legend of St George and the Dragon is not history — it is allegory, developed in the medieval period and crystallised in the Golden Legend, a collection of saints' lives compiled in the thirteenth century. The story is straightforward: a town terrorised by a dragon, its people forced to offer increasingly valuable sacrifices to appease the beast, the king's daughter finally chosen by lot, George arriving at the crucial moment, slaying the dragon, and the grateful town converting to Christianity.

It is allegory. The dragon is evil — paganism, sin, tyranny, take your pick. George is the Christian knight who defeats it. The princess is innocence rescued. The town is humanity redeemed.

But allegory carries truth, and this one carries a truth about the English character that goes beyond the Christian message. George the dragon slayer is the protector of the innocent, the champion who arrives when things are at their worst, the soldier who fights the monster so that ordinary people don't have to. That image resonated through English culture for seven hundred years — in heraldry, in pub signs, in children's stories, in the cross on the flag.

The Cross of St George — the red cross on a white background — is one of the most recognisable symbols in the world. It flies above English cricket grounds, in the hands of England football supporters, on the flag of Georgia, on the flags of several Italian cities that also claim George as their patron. It forms the central cross of the Union Jack, the flag that flew over the largest empire in history.

A simple red cross. Recognised everywhere. Belonging, at its heart, to England.

Why April the 23rd Matters

St George's Day falls on the 23rd of April. It is also, by long tradition, the birthday and the death day of William Shakespeare — born on the 23rd of April 1564, died on the 23rd of April 1616. The man who gave the world Hamlet, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the St Crispin's Day speech, who shaped the English language more than any other writer in history, shares his day with England's patron saint.

On the 23rd of April, England celebrates the soldier saint who embodied courage and the writer who captured the human soul more completely than anyone before or since. If that doesn't deserve a national holiday, a parade, a flag on every building, and a pint raised in every pub across the country, nothing does.

Take the Day Back

St George's Day has been neglected for too long. Not because England lacks pride — travel to any England football match and you will find no shortage of it — but because somewhere along the way a generation was taught to be embarrassed about expressing it. To worry about how it looked. To leave the flag in the drawer.

Those days are over.

George was not English by birth. He never set foot on English soil. He died fifteen hundred years before the England we know came into existence. None of that matters. What matters is what he represents — the soldier of conscience, the dragon slayer, the patron of courage in the face of overwhelming odds.

England has faced those odds before. At Agincourt. At Trafalgar. In the skies above Britain in 1940. Every time, the English stood.

On the 23rd of April, fly the Cross of St George. Raise a glass to the saint, to the soldier, to the writer, to the nation. Celebrate without apology and without embarrassment the country that abolished the slave trade, that stood alone against Napoleon, that held the line against Hitler, that gave the world the English language, common law, parliamentary democracy, and the greatest literature in human history.

England does not need to apologise for itself.

God for Harry, England, and St George.