St. Andrew’s Day

Ah, St. Andrew’s Day. A festive day when everyone goes out to town, all decked out in green, getting plastered on Guinness, singing merry drinking songs, rivers turn green in Chicago, leprechauns running amok…

Oh, wait, that’s St. Patrick’s Day, the annual feast of one of Ireland’s patron saints, held on March 17th. St. Andrew, on the other hand is the patron saint of Scotland and St. Andrew’s Day on November 30th is Scotland’s national day. I was hoping for something akin to St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, with people, drunk on whisky, wearing blue and white, perhaps a kilt, orange hair, and so on.

Yeah, kinda like those two.

I was expecting the River Clyde to turn blue (as opposed to murky brown).
Instead, some buildings were lit up in blue, such as the Clyde Arc in Glasgow.
I was expecting most people to be wearing kilts and what not.
Instead, we got a few people wearing kilts, a few more wearing the Scottish national football jersey, and some blue sheep on a field.
I was expecting to hear bagpipes all over the city centre, playing Scotland the Brave and the Flower of Scotland.
Instead there was a Peruvian pan flute band on Buchanan Street and later on there were three teens in kilts playing the hokey-pokey on a bagpipe and some drums outside Buchanan Galleries.
I was expecting haggis and other Scottish delicacies to be served at the celebrations. Instead, they had Aberdeen Angus Beef Burgers. (Ok, this I didn’t mind, but I’d just eaten before going to town.)

Now, I’m not saying that the Scots should emulate what the Irish have created with St. Patrick’s Day. No no, beat it. That’s right. Make it a HUGE celebration, doing everything the Irish and wannabe-Irish (even if it’s just for one day) do for their feast, then up the ante. The timing is pretty good, as it’ll kick off the Christmas season with a bang. With luck, there will be snow on the ground, and with everything else being blue or lit up in blue, the atmosphere has been set for a grand feast. Sure, Burns’ Night is apparently a bigger party, but it’s in celebration of a poet! Hogmanay, well, the whole most of the world is already celebrating the turn of the year on that day. St. Andrew’s Day is in celebration of a patron saint, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, so a notable historic/literary person. It’s also a celebration of Scotland the nation (guess independence from the United Kingdom would help here…) and what it is to be a Scot. Remember Braveheart? Who outside of the United Kingdom knew much about Braveheart or about Scotland before the movie? (Besides whisky, golf, tartans, bagpipes and men in skirts kilts.

What else is being celebrated around the world on November 30th? Let’s check Wikipedia, shall we? Ok, Barbados has it’s Independence Day on that date and in the Philippines they celebrate some revolutionary leader’s birthday. St. Andrew’s Day is already celebrated (for different reasons than in Scotland) in a few other countries in relation to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Best of all, it’s the official end of the Hurricane season, which should get the Americans interested. All you need is some good PR, state-sponsored festivities and fireworks, and a few tricks up your sleeve which’ll become traditions and catch the short soundbite- driven attention span of the 24-hour international media. St. Patrick’s Day has the trick of turning the Chicago River green every year. (The whole sea around Scotland is already blue!) The small flock blue sheep was a great touch. Now crank it up and colour all the sheep in the land blue! Or something in that direction.

The shindig in George Square, ingeniously called Shindig in the Square, was more of an outdoor concert/carnival atmosphere than an all out party-party. Hell, any football victory, be it Celtic or Rangers, pulls more people and more colour to the streets of Glasgow. Especially colour as most supporters of the two teams will wear the jersey and/or a scarf all day on match day. Even girls! (Yes, girls like football.) From what I’ve heard so far, Hogmanay and Burns’ Night are the two bigger winter celebrations, with Edinburgh’s Hogmanay party being called by some “the world’s best New Year celebrations”. We’ll see about that one of these years…

So that was a brief glimpse at St. Andrew’s Day in Glasgow for us. For another barrage of photos, click on the thumbnails below for some photos from the Christmas decorations and St. Andrews Day celebrations from Glasgow’s city centre. (The Glasgow Winterfest Website has a webcam online of George Square.)

Here’s to hoping that next year’s St. Andrew’s Day will be bigger and bluer!

-Jani