It was that time of year again for St George’s Day and people were rushing out to buy their drinking hats, stock up on the Guinness and looking for the pubs with the best drinking deals… or maybe not.
Saint George is most famous for slaying a dragon and dying for his Christian beliefs. As the patron saint of England you would think many people would look forward to celebrating this April 23rd, just like St Patrick’s Day, but in Lincoln this might not be the case.
It seems that for a lot of students, St George’s Day is just another day. Natalie Bogle, a criminology student, says: “Not a lot of people are aware of the date and the complete story of St George’s day, that’s why I think not a lot of people celebrate it. Also I think it’s because it’s quite a mythical story and why celebrate something that may not be completely true?”
Bogle says she is disappointed by the lack of interest: “There also isn’t enough advertisement or awareness for St George’s Day and there should be more.”
“I think it’s a little sad that more people are willing to get more involved in St Patrick’s rather than over the actual day for the English saint.”
Other students agreed that there just isn’t enough advertisement and many of them just didn’t know when St George’s Day is.
Not all students are letting the day pass unnoticed including Luke Glossop who says: “I celebrate St George’s Day like I celebrate St Patrick’s Day. I will be going up to the cathedral on Sunday to see the parade and I am looking forward to it.”
The parade takes place at Lincoln Cathedral and I spoke to one of the vergers at the cathedral to find out how popular the celebrations are. He said: “The event is one of our third biggest events we put on at the cathedral.”
“We get up to 1,600 people attending and we also have different things going on in the castle aswell as the cathedral”.
The verger went on to say: “I am surprised that not many of the students have heard about the parade, because we like to keep St Georges day an important day to remember here in Lincoln. We make sure all the shops get involved around Bailgate; they all hang the St George’s cross in the shop window in support of the day.”
Seeing as he is our English saint, maybe we should all head on up to the cathedral and learn a little more about a man who died for what he believed in and maybe even have a pint or two just for a little extra support.
The St George’s Day Parade takes place at the Cathedral on Sunday, April 25th and starts at 1pm.
Nice article. To be fair, how many people in fact know the story of St. Patrick either? I know the George slaying the dragon tale much better than Patrick’s… which is nothing!
The only reason people ‘celebrate’ St. Paddy’s more than St. George’s is that it’s a big excuse to drink, whereas St. George’s definitely isn’t. If it were simply a celebration of England (like Australia’s Australia day for example) then it might be better known…
I’d love to celebrate the history and some traditions of the country, but honestly, I’m put off by nationalists. The only time I’m used to seeing the flag is in pubs where people give you funny looks, and belonging to lairy people at football matches.
St George was Turkish, and could be seen as a great reason to celebrate the multiculture of todays modern society, but instead I tend to view it as the opposite, with groups like the EDL or BNP trying to hard to get involved with such events at the moment.
They say that people are offended by British traditions, when really, I think people are offended by those people’s participation in them.