Should we abolish the practice of celebrating patron saints of countries? Today is ‘St David’s Day’ here in Wales. Across the nation little girls will go to school wearing what is deemed to be the national dress; people will wear daffodils or leeks on their breast; societies will gather for a meal and a celebration. But apart from the fun, is there any real point in any of it and has the time come for us to confine it to history?

The start of the practice of naming dead Christians who had lived exemplary lives as patrons of churches, nations, and even jobs (Matthew being the patron of tax collectors, for example) is somewhat lost in the mist of time but we can be sure that during the fourth century it became quite common as the gathered church moved out of homes and into purpose built buildings. These buildings were often named after the local Christian hero who was either instrumental in bringing the gospel to that city or had been martyred in the area. As Catholic theology developed, the church came to believe that these patron saints could be called upon to intercede on behalf of his or her church or nation. At what point simple superstition came into the proceedings is unclear but superstition is most certainly what it became.

So let’s turn to David and why it could be a good thing for us to abolish such a practice. The first question to ask is how is celebrating St David’s day helping the people of Wales develop their own sense of Welshness beyond that of sickly sentimentality? Our identity as a separate nation with value is pretty low. After centuries of domination – where any national symbol was ripped away from us – collective self-esteem became almost non-existent. Our legal system was dismantled, our language was banned, our rights to self-determination lost. Even the Encyclopaedia Britannica would say ‘For Wales see England’. Slivers of identity were held onto, or course – for the secular it was rugby; for the religious it was revival. So does St David’s Day do anything to counter any of this?  Does having one day wearing a limp daffodil help our self-understanding for the other 364 days?

And then there is the religious side of things, for St David’s Day is meant to be a celebration of Christian Wales. It is David who gets the credit for bringing the good news onto our shores but just like our tendency with revival history, he didn’t do it all by himself. Since then there have been many ebbs and tides for the faith in the nation. Today we’re in a particularly bad period and we most certainly can’t call Cymru Christian any longer. So does this celebration help our spirituality? Does it connect us with a saviour who calls on us to forgive our enemies no matter how badly bruised our national ego may be? Or has that daffodil become the Welsh version of Adam’s fig leaf?

There’s an old Welsh saying that goes like this: ‘Gwisg genhinnen yn dy gap a gwisg hi yn dy galon’ (Wear your leek (or daffodil) in your cap and wear it in your heart). It contains, I believe, a profound truth: a superficial celebration is no substitute for depth either in national identity or faith.