A Bloody Magna-Ficent Idea For a Holiday

The British Library's copy of the Magna Carta

BBC History magazine recently asked which historical event should be commemorated with a U.K. national holiday. Topping the list was the Magna Carta, which was inked at Runnymede on June 15, 1215.

This choice resonated with my one-quarter English background (*), which includes six Magna Carta signers among my forebears. (Honest.) But much more importantly, it is appropriate because it was an event of profound significance for freedom loving peoples everywhere.

Simon Jeffrey at The Guardian News Blogs think a Magna Carta holiday is a good idea:

The detail of medieval agreement can seem obscure to us now, but legislators in later centuries used it to implement principles that are not, such as habeas corpus.

There is, it has to be said, some scepticism. The England Project blog, the kind that agitates for an English parliament, considers it "a strange choice," since the barons' contract with King John "doesn't signify anything particularly British in origin." It was not until almost 500 years later that the 1707 Act of Union created a single kingdom of Great Britain.

Still, June 15 has a lot going for it. The revolutionary acts of Thomas Jefferson and friends and the stormers of the Bastille were not timed with the leisure pursuits of future generations at the front of their minds, but the Americans and French seem to have had the right idea in having their national days on July 4 and 14.

Midsummer is a splendid time of year. If June 15 is as close as we can go, then so be it.

For more on the Magna Carta, including a translation, go here.

(*) The rest of me be German, Irish, Scottish, Swedish, Italian and Borish, er . . . Moorish, in order of percentage.