The swastika and the cross - Brighton style!

Now this is a swastika

It all happens in the East Sussex town of Brighton where, last week, a Green Party councillor accused a Conservative colleague of wearing a swastika.

Well, actually, nothing would surprise me with regard to Brighton which has a well established reputation for all things involving the demonic (kiss me quick hats, candy floss and a surfeit of over zealous traffic wardens).

But Mary Mears, former leader of the Brighton and Hove City Council (much admired and respected by my good friend Laurence England), was not wearing a swastika around her neck but an Irish cross of St Brigid.

Red faces in the Green camp!

There is, it has to be said, a rather vague similarity between a swastika and a cross of St Brigid, but you would probably have needed to have overdosed on Babycham or, whatever it is they quaff in hedonistic Brighton, to have confused the two.

And this is the cross of St Brigid

If you consult the internet oracle on the matter you will be informed that, indeed, St Brigid's cross is based on the swastika design (a motif that originates from the Indian sub continent region).

Now I find all this tosh about how we replaced pagan symbols and feasts with Christian ones, in order to convert the natives, a bit far fetched.

I mean, one day you are an Irish prince river dancing around an image of a swastika and then the next you are bowing before the same symbol but, this time it's a cross. Baloney!

One of the accounts of the origins of the cross of St Brigid is as follows:-

A pagan chieftain from the neighborhood of Kildare was dying. Christians in his household sent for Brigid to talk to him about Christ. When she arrived the chieftain was raving. As it was impossible to instruct this delirious man, hopes for his conversion seemed doubtful. Brigid sat down at his bedside and began consoling him. As was customary, the dirt floor was strewn with rushes both for warmth and cleanliness. Brigid stooped down and started to weave them into a cross, fastening the points together. The sick man asked what she was doing. She began to explain the cross, and as she talked his delirium quieted and he questioned her with growing interest. Through her weaving, he converted and was baptized at the point of death. Since then the cross of rushes has been venerated in Ireland.

There you have it, much more convincing than the pagan symbol story.

Now I suppose that there will be another outpouring of grief in Brighton and Hove over a councillor wearing a cross, symbol of Christ.