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Saint David’s Day

March 1, 2012 by · Comments Off on Saint David’s Day 

Saint David’s Day, Saint David’s Day is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March each year. The first day of March was chosen in remembrance of the death of Saint David. Tradition holds that he died on that day in 589. The date was declared a national day of celebration within Wales in the 18th century.

Cross-party support resulted in the National Assembly for Wales voting unanimously to make St. David’s Day a public holiday in 2000. A poll conducted for Saint David’s Day in 2006 found that 87% of people in Wales wanted it to be a bank holiday, with 65% prepared to sacrifice a different bank holiday to ensure this. A petition in 2007 to make St. David’s Day a bank holiday was rejected by the office of the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Happy St. David’s Day to our friends in the UK! To mark the occasion, a new Google Doodle appears on Google’s UK homepage today in celebration of the patron saint of Wales. The logo features a red dragon sitting in a field of daffodils.

The red dragon – drawn with its tail wrapped around the “l” in Google’s logo – is inspired by the Welsh Dragon that adorns the national flag of Wales. Wearing daffodils is another tradition of the holiday.

March 1 has been recognized as a national day of celebration in St. David’s honor since the 18th century. The date was chosen in remembrance of the date he died in 589 AD.

Google has observed St. David’s Day with Doodles since 2006. In 2011 Google dressed the second, lower-case “g” in a Welsh hat, face lacing, shawl, and a daffodil.

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