April 23 may not be the “perfect date” (a title reserved for the 25th), but it comes close to fans of literature and flowers. April 23 marks St. George’s Day, the patron saint of a surprising number of countries, including England, Catalonia (in Spain), Portugal, Georgia, and Ethiopia. It is also recognized as World Book Day, an extension of its celebration in the Catalan region in Spain.

　　In Catalan culture, the Diada de Sant Jordi is celebrated by the exchange of books and roses. While roses have long been associated with St. George, the practice of a book exchange began in the early twentieth century when author and publisher Vicente Cavel proposed commemorating April 23 as the traditionally observed date on which both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died in 1616.

　　The seventeenth century ballad of St. George and the Dragon recounts the slaying of the dragon as the ultimate heroic act, comparing it favorably in each stanza to feats by other heroes. The story follows a familiar format: a dragon terrorizes a village, demanding tribute that goes from taking livestock and treasure to human lives, chosen by lot. When the princess is chosen as the sacrifice, St. George learns of the dragon’s activities, slays the dragon, and rescues the princess, along with the town. In Catalan, the legend adds that a rose bush full of roses as red as dragon’s blood grew out of the ground where the dragon was slain. The knight plucks a rose and gives it to the princess. While St. George was alive in the third century and was likely martyred under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, he became a prominent icon in the Crusades, eventually becoming England’s patron saint and chivalric ideal. In Spain, he was venerated for appearing to the Christian soldiers in the Battle of Alcoraz in 1096. 

　　“A knight, a playwright, and an author walk into a bar” sounds like the start of an obscure literary joke, but the connections between the three are closer than they might appear. Cervantes’s Don Quixote famously captures the story of a knight errant living, mentally, in a romanticized chivalric era of knights, fair maidens, and honor. Many of Shakespeare’s history plays feature kings of the Crusades, including direct references to St. George in the battle cry “God for Harry, England, and St. George” in Henry V. Shakespeare’s plays and Cervantes’ fiction use the lens of that time period to explore contemporary themes and tensions.

　　Aside from the surface-level parallel of war in the Middle East, low literacy rates, and a recent pandemic, our times appear to have little in common with the Middle Ages. Yet, we can relate to the cultural unease, the irreversible march of time and the destruction of lives and homes through war. The growth of artificial intelligence and increased immersion in devices places us in a position like that of Don Quixote, where we often cannot tell what is real and what is not. 

　　In the midst of this political, cultural, and economic turmoil, sits a small, simple practice: the giving of books and roses in commemoration of a saint, a playwright, and an author. There is something poignant about this tradition coming out of a commemoration of war and death, the tradition itself representing an exchange of blows and swords for books and flowers. More than that, however, the tradition points towards a way to navigate a tumultuous period in our own lifetime, without tilting at too many windmills.

　　Books, while lovely gifts in themselves, also represent a physical capturing of knowledge, a way to pursue the free exchange of ideas and the building on the knowledge of others that are integral to a free society. The ability to read should not be taken for granted; literacy provides special access to the world. Banning certain books simply proves how much power we believe the pen holds to sway belief and action. Not all books contain worthwhile ideas, but the ability to sort through and analyze ideas is always worth cultivating. Critical thinking as an intellectual muscle requires regular exercise, and a habit of careful reading is as good as any gym. We must keep the ability to think for ourselves. Books cannot think for us, but they can capture our thoughts in a way that allows others to engage with our thoughts, as we have done with Shakespeare and Cervantes, for centuries.

　　Books can, of course, be read or listened to online. However, we can hold paper copies and refer back to them without the fear that the text has been altered while we looked away. This permanence is a necessary feature, providing accountability, and it is lost in contemporary media forms. Anything digital can be taken down or altered without notice. A physical book, while it can be stolen, is less subject to alteration. The switch to on-demand streaming services has cultivated a world of renters rather than owners of goods. We can consume them only so long as our credit card and the gods of the streaming pantheon allow.

　　We leave flowers to mark the graves of the fallen. They are not frivolous distractions from pain or horror; rather, the gift of beauty can honor courage and sacrifice.

　　Books remind us to hold on to permanent things, to retain independence of thought. We have faced tumultuous times before, and so far, each time, we have laid down the sword to pick up a pen, or, in some cases, gardening shears.

　　Modern roses, like books, are the result of intentional human cultivation over time. However, if books remind us of what is permanent, roses are a vivid representation of the fragility of beauty. Roses most commonly symbolize romantic love, but taken more broadly, they represent a perennial hardiness as they bud, bloom, and die, only to bud again. The endless availability of flowers in supermarkets immunizes many of us from the reality of this cycle. We see only the penultimate stage—the bloom right before it fades. 

　　Nature brings us back to ourselves, back to sanity, as depicted, pithily, in the admonition to “touch grass,” a remedy for those seemingly out of touch with reality. Indeed, there is a medical basis for the health benefits of exposure to nature, though of course, the poets were far ahead of the empirical research. In “The Peace of Wild Things,” Wendell Berry beautifully depicts the solace that nature provides for existential fear, a feeling echoed by the Romantic poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and captured, fittingly, in books. 

　　The idea that flowers can show us a way through tumultuous times might appear saccharine at best, and the height of naïveté at worst. Yet, in the legend of St. George, red roses appear out of the pool of the dragon’s blood; in Flanders Field, the poppies from the blood of soldiers. We leave flowers to mark the graves of the fallen. They are not frivolous distractions from pain or horror; rather, the gift of beauty can honor courage and sacrifice.

　　The gift of a book and a rose is a small act, which cannot by itself cure the pathologies of the modern age. It does, however, mark participation in a tradition larger than oneself, one that crosses the borders of time and space. On St. George’s Day, we treasure knowledge and beauty by giving them to others.