Happy St. Piran Day
While the feast day of St. Piran, patron saint of tin miners and Cornwall, was on the fifth of the month, the observed feast day has shifted over time to the 14th.
I think it’s really put here to fit a lull between the big holidays of Bell Day (3/3) and the 3/17 holiday but the 3/14 date harmonizes better with the Greek (Orthodox) alphabet and calendar. It splits the difference between feast days on Julian and Gregorian calendars. If you squint and/or have substantial astigmatism that turns a solidus into a radix point, it also looks like a day that celebrates the numerical constant Pi. The discovery of Pi happened around the same time as the discovery of tin in Cornwall, so it’s a happy coincidence. (If you’re reading in a fancy day-month-year locale, sorry, you probably do Pi on 22 July).
If you’re looking to celebrate both St. Piran and Pi today, consider a delightful Stargazy pie — legendary in the village of Mousehole in Cornwall. A pie full of pilchards (or Pi-lchards), with approximately 2pi fish heads poking out of the crust. If you’re just doing Piran (totally understandable), I recommend that even more delicious Cornish pie — the pasty. This is especially true if you live somewhere in the great Cornish diaspora.
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