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jimbo;844497 wrote: are we allowed to celebrate this year , it never ceases to amaze my that on paddy's day the beer is dyed green and even if your great great uncle Patrick the third was Irish you celebrate it



then why is it frowned upon to celebrate being English



well this year just like every year i'm going to celebrate it , me and a few buddies are going out for a beer with st George flags and we are going to drink English beer and eat pie mash and liquor and today I'm proud to be English so there :p:p







http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... view23.xml


Good for you Jim !!

We've put St. George's Flags out at the front of our house, and the back, but I bet we'll be the only ones in our road that does that. Sad, really, but I believe that a lot of English people feel they have now lost their identity within the muddle that is called the EU !!!! We have to try to get back that feeling of pride in being English. :-5 Well done Jim for doing your 'bit' for the cause XXX

jimbo;844497 wrote: are we allowed to celebrate this year , it never ceases to amaze my that on paddy's day the beer is dyed green and even if your great great uncle Patrick the third was Irish you celebrate it



then why is it frowned upon to celebrate being English



well this year just like every year i'm going to celebrate it , me and a few buddies are going out for a beer with st George flags and we are going to drink English beer and eat pie mash and liquor and today I'm proud to be English so there :p:p







http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... 23.xmlMost sensible thing you have ever said:wah::wah:

Happy Saint George's Day to you!!

I know there are some here who would think me ignorant for asking, but would you tell us foreigners a little bit about it? I know I could look it up, but that's not the same as hearing about it from the source! What are your customs in celebrating it?

there was a little bit about it on the news yesterday, how people want to bring st georges day celebrations back BUT in these days of not being able to hang xmas decorations in schools or have morning assemblys for fear of offending other faiths and not even being able to hoist the union jack in certain places, people dont want to get caught up in the rows that will inevitably ensue if they did celebrate.

this country is now no longer "british " so what have we got to celebrate ??

I think that the reason why the English have been reluctant to celebrate the National day of England is all about the sensitivities of being the leading nation in the U.K. and nothing to do with the EU, which is only a very recent political development in the history of these islands. For centuries the English have been encouraged by their leading classes to celebrate "Britain" which is not a country, but a State comprising 3 countries, and in order to not offend the junior partners the Scottish, and Welsh, the English have been taught to frown upon their own nationalism, which is always portrayed as some kind of sinister thing, while other nation's celebration of themselves is apaulded. The other idea in the old days was to celebrate the "British" empire, which was really the English Empire, but built with a lot of help from the Scots, Welsh and Irish. My advice is go out and celebrate it, ye are English people living in England, and if you don't celebrate that fact then no one else will, and don't apologize to anyone for feeling proud of England either, from Berwick upon tweed down to land's end, its your country after all.

Of course nowadays you are not allowed to offend anyone by expressing your own English identity in your own country, England, as some committe will complain that bengali Muslims, or a Coptic Somalis might feel excluded or even threatened by the fact that they are now living in a country full of English people (you would think that the name of the country, England, might have forewarned them of this outcome), despite the fact they for the most part have voluntarily moved to the Christian, Western England to get away from their own countries. Its seems a crazy way for a country to be in terms of disaproving of allowing its citizens to express their natural identity and homeland, but there you go.

RedGlitter;844520 wrote: Happy Saint George's Day to you!!

I know there are some here who would think me ignorant for asking, but would you tell us foreigners a little bit about it? I know I could look it up, but that's not the same as hearing about it from the source! What are your customs in celebrating it?


In my lifetime I don't recall any St George's Day celebrations. If there are any traditions, they are waiting to be revived and I don't know what they are. For a long time the Cross of St George (the English flag) was associated with football hooliganism and racism. In the last ten years or so it has become a more acceptable symbol again - ten years ago I'd probably have put the Union Jack under my name, not the English flag.

For a long time, the English (well, the middle classes at any rate) subsumed themselves in the Union ("We are Brits first and English second"), but the recent devolutions in terms of the Welsh and Scottish Assemblies have made that a less acceptable position from an English point of view, especially since the other countries in the Union made it very clear they didn't look at the situation like that.

Increased English nationalism has been linked to the recent devolutions, but proof is hard to come by. It is also possible that the recent waves of immigration from Eastern Europe and the threat of Islamic Fundamentalism have had some effect.

Oh, and St George isn't even English! Think he was a greek, and he's the patron saint of other countries too - Georgia springs to mind. He's a symbol of courage, chivalry and protection of the innocent - the true Christian Knight.

Think I'd better go and shoot a Frenchman to celebrate.:p

Fortunately in Ireland we are still allowed to feel proud of being Irish, and we haven't as yet been made to feel guilty about it and start apologizing to everyone for who and what we are, though there are plenty of people in Ireland who would dearly like to reintroduce the catholic guilt thing, but now based on the fact that being fairly typical westerm White Europeans we are all obviously a bunch of evil, earth destroying, children hating, zionist, racists who can't dance properly and don't sing loudly enough at mass and spend are days looking for people to persecute. :wah:



Oh, another interesting St George fact, he is also big in Catalonia in spain, they celebrate St George's day in a big way as well, and I also think that he may have been a palestinian by birth, though obviously this was several years before the intafada.