it’s the welsh in me

st. patrick’s day is one of those holidays just about every american knows about — even the americans that aren’t irish (and there’s a lot of those). but not many people know about st. david’s day, which celebrates the patron saint of wales.

wales?

oh, you mean england’s sheep-herding, tin-mining cousin they like to keep hidden in the closet and only pull out for special family occasions to celebrate the grand ol’ “island story” and remind everyone of how it’s really just another part of england because their heir to the throne is called the “prince of wales” — that wales?

sure. but it’s a lot more interesting than that, no matter what the brits might think.

i’m not gonna lie — my ancestry is mostly english, if you count all sides, with a strong dose of german and several injections of irish to boot. but we have just enough welsh to brag about it and make things interesting. so, after we visited wales (sadly only for a day) in 2006 and i found out that they also have a patron saint, i decided i wanted to celebrate his day like we do st. patrick’s day.

the only problem was i constantly forgot when st. david’s day fell, so we didn’t end up celebrating it until this year. but we did celebrate, in a minor fashion.

the daffodil is wales’ national flower/one of their national symbols, so mom hunted up a vase of silk daffodils for the dinner table. sadly there aren’t any fresh daffodils poking their faces out yet. leeks are another traditional welsh symbol, and apparently st. david’s personal symbol, so we had those, too … only we ate them instead of using them as decorations. we had welsh rarebit with leeks, and sauteed kale with the rest of the leeks thrown in for good measure. i forgot to play my cd of bryn terfel and the welsh national opera, though, which was a bit sad.

but i’ll remember it for next year’s celebrations.