Today is Yorkshire Day. So being a foreigner in these parts I decided to do a bit of research and find out something about this day of county, or perhaps regional, pride. What is it about and where has it come from?

Yorkshire has 5 million people within its three ridings, which is a larger population than the whole of Scotland, Denmark and twice the size of Wales. So if there is a Scottish Assembly and a Welsh one it does make some sense to think about a Yorkshire one, though as with all of these things that idea stands or falls on the finer details. Even though the County of West Yorkshire has completely disappeared with the metropolitan districts carving it up, I have noticed that there is still a regional identity that makes the old ridings live on. In one sense West Yorkshire doesn’t exist any more as a local government area, it has been obliterated by an administrative shake up. In another sense, as a region, it most clearly does!

The origins of Yorkshire Day are traced back to 1st August 1759. After the battle of Minden in Germany soldiers from the 51st Regiment of Foot, later the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, picked white roses as a tribute to their fallen comrades. So the white rose was the original poppy. Since then a number of Yorkshire regiments have worn a white rose on 1st August as a tribute to commemorate the day and as a sign of respect for their predecessors. So 1st August was picked in 1975 when Yorkshire Day was set up, possibly as a reaction to the administrative shake up changing long standing borders.

The white rose, of course, is the symbol of the House of York from the Wars of the Roses. It was adopted by Edmund, Duke of York, for his heraldry, while his brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, took the red rose. It was used by other families too, but I suppose the War of the Roses, with its sharp distinction between forces, fixed it in the mind.

The white rose refers to the Virgin Mary. One of her medieval titles is the Mystic Rose of Heaven and perhaps the House of York had a particular devotion to Mary. It was not uncommon for symbols of religious devotion to be incorporated into heraldry during the medieval period. I think the red rose of Lancaster may refer to St George and the legend of red roses growing where the dragon’s blood fell.

Roses have ancient religious connections. They grew in the hanging gardens of Babylon in the 6th century BC. These gardens were near to the Gate of Ishtar, the goddess identified with the planet Venus, and she was given the title of Lady of the Garden of Heaven. Greek mythology has Aphrodite, the goddess of love, also associated with Venus, springing into life from the foam of the sea. Where that foam fell the legend has white roses growing. There are references in the Old Testament to the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley (Song of Songs), and to the desert blossoming as a rose when the kingdom of righteousness is established (Isaiah). Put all of these traditions into the melting pot, add the Virgin Mary and it is not difficult to see how she became associated with the rose and the lily.

Devotion to Mary probably grew up as a compensation for the way the Christian faith became over male in character. Christianity forgot that the word for Spirit in Hebrew is female and that there are natural associations there with motherhood for creation and a balanced spirituality. Christian tradition forgot that the eternal Wisdom, which lies behind how we understand Jesus, also has feminine images and words behind it in Greek.

So the white rose takes us to Mary, to a restoring of balance in how we see our genders reflected in our sense of the eternal and the divine, in the created order. It reminds us that identity has to be rooted and that goes for spiritual identity too.

Both of our readings touched on this, at least in an implicit way. Joseph appeals to be able to take his father’s body back to Canaan, the place that formed him and shaped him, to the land that fed and nurtured him (Genesis 50). There is a strong association between place and self understanding. I think there is something very deep here which we are only just beginning to understand again. The new proposals for reforming where people can be married in church interestingly recognise this kind of thought, that family links with a place will be sufficient grounds for marrying in a particular church, even if the couple have moved away.

I think I give a cautious welcome to this kind of thought. Returning to the place that formed you, or where your parents live, only really makes sense from the Christian point of view if there is something living that can be nurtured by it. We do not support ancestor worship in the church and the faith of our ancestors has to become our own if it is to live and grow in us; if we are to live and grow in it. God is the God of our pilgrimage. In Christ he goes with us, even before us, so is not only to be found in one place. Indeed we have to learn that God does this and not limit our encounters to just one place, especially if it is a place of the past and not the present.

That is my hesitancy with the opening up of where people can be married that we don’t conspire with keeping God at a safe distance, but rather encourage an engagement with the living God who will transform us and change us. This is the tenor of our second reading, which wanted to ensure that the exhilaration of speaking in tongues actually serves to edify and build us up (1 Cor 14:1-19); it must connect with how we live and nurture us.

I suppose the same goes for Yorkshire Day. It has to be a living identity that is being celebrated and not just the place of nostalgia. Here we find the same struggle between the place that forms us and recognising that our pilgrimage will take us on and what really matters will be with us and ahead of us.

Yorkshire Day is an opportunity to look at what feeds our identity and to ensure that our spirituality is alive and nurtured by the living God.

© Ian Black 2004

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