St George’s Day falls on 23 April, and it is the least celebrated national day in the United Kingdom. It is not a public holiday, most workplaces ignore it entirely, and a substantial proportion of English people could not name the date.
He was not English
George was a Roman soldier, born in Cappadocia in what is now Turkey to a Greek Christian family, and martyred at Lydda in Palestine around AD 303 for refusing to renounce his faith. He never set foot in England, and there is no evidence he was aware of its existence.
He became England’s patron through the crusades. Returning soldiers brought his cult back, Edward III made him patron of the Order of the Garter in 1348, and his cross became the English battle flag.
He is also patron saint of Georgia, Portugal, Ethiopia, Catalonia, Malta, Lithuania, Moscow and Beirut, among others, which rather undercuts any exclusive claim.
The dragon
Entirely legendary and much later. The story of George rescuing a princess from a dragon appears in the Golden Legend of the 1260s, roughly a thousand years after his death, and it is a folk tale attached to a name rather than anything from his life.
Why the English do so little
Three reasons, and they compound:
First, England did not need a separate national identity for most of its history. The English used “English” and “British” interchangeably because they dominated the union, and a distinct national day never seemed necessary.
Second, the flag was contaminated. Through the 1970s and 80s the St George’s Cross was appropriated by the National Front and other far-right groups, and displaying it came to carry an unwelcome implication. A great many English people simply stopped using it.
Third, there is a broad English discomfort with overt patriotism — flag-waving reads as slightly embarrassing in a way that would be incomprehensible in America.
The reclamation
The flag has been substantially recovered, and football did most of the work. From Euro 96 onwards, England supporters adopted the St George’s Cross en masse in place of the Union Flag, and a generation grew up seeing it painted on faces at tournaments rather than on political banners.
Observance of the day has grown modestly since. Some pubs mark it, some councils fly the flag, and there are periodic campaigns — supported at various times by both main parties — to make it a public holiday. None has succeeded.
Shakespeare
23 April is also, by tradition, both the birthday and the death date of William Shakespeare. The death date is documented; the birthday is inferred from a baptism record of 26 April and the customary three-day interval, and the neatness of the coincidence has always been treated with mild suspicion.
Stratford-upon-Avon holds a substantial celebration on the day, which is in practice the largest 23 April event in England — and is about the playwright rather than the saint.