St. David's Day

Quiz: What holiday, besides Ash Wednesday, was on Wednesday this week?

Answer: You already know, because it's in the title of the post.

What is St. David's Day, you ask? Well, it's the Welsh version of St. Patrick's Day.

But instead of the 17th, it's on the 1st.

Instead of green, red is the dominant color.

Instead of shamrocks, they have daffodils and leeks.

Instead of leprechauns, they have dragons.

And, instead of a kitschy, popular celebration, it's largely unheard of in the United States. It does puzzle me why some cultures get their own popular celebrations, whereas others don't. I'm not complaining, it's just curious. The internet tells me that the Welsh immigrants were Protestant, so they assimilated easily, while the Irish were Catholics, so they retained a distinct heritage. Hence one holiday is still common and the other is not

I've heard a little about St. David's Day here and there, but this was the first year I was really aware of it.

When I was a kid, we had these Childcraft books, one of which was about holidays (which was really the only volume I looked at), and it told the story of the Welsh army wearing leeks to distinguish themselves from their enemies, thereby winning the battle. I didn't even know what or where Wales was back then, but I always remembered subconsciously that there was a holiday about leeks on March 1, somewhere. That was the first time I ever heard of leeks, and I didn't like them when my mom later put them in soup.

In 2013, I had a roommate who was a member of BYU Men's Chorus, and one March day he told me that their director, Rosalind Hall, got up and said, annoyed, "None of you are wearing red!" They all were like, "Sorry?" She said, "All you care about is Ireland!"

Sometimes I enjoy thumbing through old editions of the Children's Friend (especially at Halloween). Recently I was looking at some March issues from the 1930s, and one of them briefly mentioned St. David's Day (with no apparent references in the issue to St. Patrick's Day. More Mormon pioneers came from Wales than came from Ireland).

I've been researching different areas of the world from the 1850s, and as I recently wrapped up my work on the Sandwich Islands, I have been researching Wales and the efforts of Dan Jones therein.

And since I now knew more about St. David's Day, I thought it was a perfect time to acknowledge its existence.

So, on March 1, I wore my red sweater (even though I decided it was too warm to wear after Valentine's Day). And I spent the day researching Wales. I didn't learn as much as I would have liked, but it was still fun to delve into a place and language I haven't studied before.

And I had to have some kind of leek dish for dinner. Last summer, I made a tomato cobbler, which was quite satisfying, and one of the recipe variations was leek cobbler.

It was OK. The tomato cobbler was better.

But it was still fun to pretend to be culturally cognizant.