Bristol’s patron saint should be celebrated with sunshine and cider

Not many other cities have their own patron saint so should make the most of him

Last month, the whole of Ireland celebrated their homeland by drinking Guinness, while rivers in major American cities had green dye poured into them.

Earlier in March, Welsh people wore leeks, Cornish people wished each other Gool Peran Lowen, and later this month England will celebrate St George’s Day by collectively agreeing to take a day off from arguing about his flag to instead argue about where he was born.

Yes, it’s the season for places to mark their patron saint’s day, and Bristol is massively missing an opportunity here.

With the city’s hospitality industry saying they are down and almost out, and getting a kicking from the city council saying it will scrap its night-time economy initiative, the time has come for Bristol to think outside the box, get creative and do something that will mark the city out as somewhere proud to not be on the UK City of Culture 2029 short list.

Because Bristol, unlike almost everywhere else in the country, has its own patron saint.

Yes, you read that right, Bristol has its own patron saint. You probably didn’t know that. You almost certainly have never heard of him, so let me introduce to you the wonderfully-named St Jordan of Bristol.

Yes, again, you read that right too – Bristol’s patron saint is called Jordan.

Unlike St Patrick (from the Bristol Channel, not from Ireland), St Andrew (from Galilee, not Scotland), and St George (from what is now Turkey, not England) St Jordan is actually from Bristol.

The legends are that he was a local lad converted to Christianity by St Augustine back in the days when the Saxons had recently arrived, and Bristol was a village inhabited by a mix of pagan people and Romano-British people who mixed Christianity with whatever else took their fancy.

The historians reckon that part was made up in medieval times, but that St Jordan was a member of the Fitzharding family – the nobles that ran the country in these parts in the 1100s or 1200s.

Whichever it is will probably be never known, but by the 1400s and 1500s, Bristol had a proper cult of St Jordan thing going on, with a chapel on what is now College Green dedicated to him, and he was basically Bristol’s go-to saint.

All that Catholic superstition ended with the Reformation – thanks, Henry VIII – and the records and history of him was lost over time.

The date of St Jordan’s Feast Day was lost over time too, which leaves us now, in Bristol, with a golden opportunity.

St Patrick’s Day in Ireland, New York and Chicago, provides a multi-million dollar boost to their economies. Pasty sellers in Cornwall report an upturn in sales on St Piran’s Day, as do Chinese manufacturers of St George’s flags, in April.

Bristol should celebrate St Jordan more – in fact, Bristol should just celebrate St Jordan. And the fact he is something of a mystery also means he’s a complete clear white blank page. He can be anything we want him to be. His Feast Day could be any day we want it to be.

In fact, why stick to having one set day in the year that it has to be every year? It might rain. So let’s do something a bit different.

A couple of weeks ago now, we had a glorious little spell of weather in the middle of March. After what felt like seven and a half years of continuous rain, we had dry, sunny and warm weather for a few days, including a weekend. People were out and about and were smiling.

It was no coincidence that, during these few days, a link to a website went viral on Bristol’s social media. It shows, in real time, which pub gardens are in direct sunshine right now. Bristol has its priorities, we know what’s important in life.

READ MORE: Bristol’s best beer garden as top five across city announced

Last week too, one of the 15 trazillion emails from PR companies that spend five seconds in my inbox before getting to know the bin folder was one from Lazy Susan Furniture entitled: “Exact Date You Should Bring Your Garden Furniture Outdoors”, and bless them, they’d listed most cities in the UK with different dates.

Londoners are advised that April 8 is the optimum day to first get out the garden settees, but Bristolians should really wait until April 20, in case you were wondering.

All of these little bits of input sparked a Eureka! moment with regards to the idea that Bristol should make much more of St Jordan.

Here’s the plan. Bristol celebrates St Jordan’s Day as a moveable religious feast – very much like Easter.

In the same way Easter is fixed to be the Sunday after the first full moon after the the spring equinox, and in the same way Eid depends on whether you, or maybe somebody in Mecca, can see the moon on a moving, but specific day in the Islamic calendar, when St Jordan’s Day is going to be each year could be dependent on a set series of criteria Bristol makes up itself.

The best day to have a public holiday is in the summer, and the best bit of the summer is when summer starts – that feeling of warmth for the first time after a long, wet and cold winter is great.

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So St Jordan’s Day should be declared to be the first Saturday when it is possible to have a barbecue in your garden with continuous sunshine, without any risk of rain, and without it getting freezing cold as soon as the sun drops away.

St Jordan’s Day should be declared to be the first Saturday of the year when people meet up to just chill out and have a picnic on the Downs, or sit by the harbourside with a few cans of Haze.

St Jordan’s Day should be the kind of Saturday when people who organised an event the week before which got rained on will say ‘ahh, we should have done it this weekend’.

St Jordan’s Day should be marked in whichever way people feel like celebrating – but some traditions we could all start would involve people filling parks, College Green, Queen Square and the harbourside, and drinking a ceremonial cider or three in his honour.

If you’re not into public drinking, it could be inviting your mates round to hang out in the garden. It could be a series of easy-to-arrange public events, like the gloriously simple but brilliant Vale Street Egg Roll, or it could be the day everyone goes for a big bike ride, following that lad with the massive drum n bass DJ bike.

One thing that’s great about Bristol is the spontaneity of its people when the sun comes out.

The council could suspend the rules for having street parties – it should be ok on St Jordan’s Day for people to be able to block off the end of their street and set up a long table as if it’s a royal wedding, and everyone bring potato salad or a big selection of beige buffet items to share.

So how do we know when St Jordan’s Day will be? How much notice will people get? We need to take this part seriously. I propose that a St Jordan’s Day Committee be set up. They will hopefully only need to meet once or twice a year.

On that committee should be five people who hold very important positions in Bristol life generally.

The first is whoever the Lord Mayor of Bristol is. This changes at the start of May each year, and I envisage calling a St Jordan’s Day committee will be one of their first tasks.

The second, and possibly most important – whoever the regular weather presenter on Points West is. At the moment, this is Ian Fergusson, and we will be in safe hands with him.

Thirdly, we need whoever the head of the Thatcher’s Family is. At the moment this is Martin Thatcher. He will have the knowledge required to assess whether there can be enough cider in Bristol.

Fourthly, given that it is a religious celebration, whoever the Bishop of Bristol is, should obviously be on the committee.

READ MORE: Drum & Bass bike ‘coming home’ to South Bristol this weekend

And finally, given that it’s St Jordan’s Day, there should be someone called Jordan from Bristol on the committee too. This could be a girl Jordan or a boy Jordan, they could be a doctor or a scaffolder, they will have applied for the role and be picked out of a hat for just that year.

There will be a set of criteria that the committee will look for, predominantly meteorologically-focussed. Is it going to be above 20 deg C for at least four hours on a Saturday afternoon? Is there a chance of rain? Is it going to be really windy? Is the temperature going to drop below 10 deg C in the evening?

The committee, guided by experts, will meet every Tuesday or Wednesday from the start of May, although a committee meeting could be called sooner, of course.

They will assess all the relevant forecasts and criteria and then formally announce that the following Saturday, three or four days away, will be St Jordan’s Day.

The announcement on the Wednesday could become, over time, increasingly elaborate. It’s just the kind of thing that would make the worldwide news, like Groundhog Day or Chicago making their river go green.

People can then crack on with whatever they were doing before, or change their plans to celebrate, or incorporate a celebration into whatever they had planned before.

Over time, hopefully, a series of easy-to-arrange events could organically grow – I don’t know… games of skittles on College Green or Queen Square, mangelwurzel-hurling in Redcatch Park, street parties in Stockwood, community picnics in Horfield, a boat race down the harbour between UWE and UoB, a charity football match on Netham Park between people who love the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood and people who hate it, a Crusty Olympics in Castle Park, a ‘who can get down The Slider the quickest’ contest. Anything is possible if you just dream, make it up and do it.

Bristol has a patron saint who may or may not have existed, may have lived 1,500 years ago or 800 years ago, but have him we do. So we should make the most of him.