Happy St George's Day!

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Have a good St George's Day!

Thanks? You too? Of all the saints/symbolic characters we could have for our informal national day, I do wonder why Saint George is used. Especially by the racist far right, do they know he's from Palestine and pretty much had nothing to do with England? The crusaders just used him as a means of committing atrocities under a different name, so the blame wouldn't fall back on England.

What's St George's Day

Happy St. Geroge's Day!

Every high ranking saint has a feast day on the calender. St. George is the patron saint of England (the flag of the modern UK is the straight up and down cross of St George with the X shaped cross of St. Andrew (patron saint of Scotland) superimposed on it.

So (I am guessing here) some folks in England latch on St. George's feast day as England's equivalent of the USA's Independence Day, or France's Bastille Day.

But how he came to be England's patron saint I have no idea. St. Paddy came to Ireland and converted the Irish to Christianity. But St. George never came anywhere near the British Isles.

All I know about St. George is that he became a big hero supposedly killed a dragon. There's a church in my city named after him and shows the picture of him fighting the dragon. Dragons in traditional western folklore represent greed, evil, destruction, and everything wrong with the world. Go figure. So naturally all of that can be solved just by worshiping the lord and going to church.

I've often wondered why dragons in Asian folklore, where they are usually believed to be gods, angels and bringers of good fortune, are so different.