English celebrate on St. George’s Day

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English food seeing a renaissance
Despite its dire reputation, English food is having something of a renaissance. Stalls lining the square sold pork pies and sausage rolls, blackcurrant jam, Stilton and Leicester cheeses and fresh oysters, crabs and scallops.

A distinctive cuisine unites the people of England. The preservation group English Heritage, which is encouraging people to celebrate St. George's Day, published a "how to" guide including traditional English recipes — from cheese scones to chicken tikka masala, an Anglo-Indian hybrid that rivals fish and chips as the country's most popular dish.

Debate rages about what it means to be English. Is English culture Morris dancing, or Britpop? Are the English an Anglo-Saxon race, or a polyglot nation built on waves of immigration, from Vikings and Normans to Indians, Pakistanis, Jamaicans, Poles and Lithuanians?

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Traditional English nationalists tend to be wary of immigration and skeptical of closer ties with Europe. But a new breed of "civic nationalists," including the singer Billy Bragg and the writer Paul Kingsnorth, favor embracing multiculturalism and membership in Europe. In a recent article for the New Statesman, Kingsnorth called it patriotism "attached to place not race, geography not biology."

A symbol of 'freedom'
Peter Tatchell, a gay rights and civil-liberties campaigner, argued that St. George should be adopted as a symbol of "freedom, dissent and multiculturalism."

Little is known for certain about the saint's life, but he is thought to have been a soldier of the Roman Empire from Cappadocia, in present-day Turkey, who was executed after refusing to persecute Christians. The story of him slaying a dragon that was terrorizing a village has been circulating since the Middle Ages. He is the patron saint of several countries — including Germany, Portugal and Georgia, which is named for him — as well as the city of Beirut and the Boy Scout movement.

St. George's popularity spread from the Middle East to Europe with knights returning from the Crusades, and he came to be regarded as a protector of English troops. In 1222 religious leaders in England — which was then Roman Catholic — declared a holiday in his honor, and by the end of the 14th century he was seen as England's patron saint.

"He was a rebel from the Middle East. His father was Turkish and his mother probably Palestinian," Tatchell said. "St. George's parentage embodies multiculturalism and his life expresses the values of English liberalism and dissent."