National Colors

On Sunday, I went running in the nearby woods with my wife, only the second time since last summer. 

When I say “running”, I mean “jogging”, at a pace that would barely qualify as a brisk walk, until my lungs can’t stand it anymore and I am forced to walk for a bit until I can manage to “run” again, all the while my wife, just to keep her pulse up, runs (actual runs) back and forth past me, like a deft crow again and again swooping past a slow gliding hawk.

She likes the company, I suppose, though I am by no means the ideal running companion.

This half-an-hour of cardiovascular hell was nicely timed to finish just as Finland’s latest matchup in the World Hockey Championship got underway, although I had to spend the first ten minutes of the game recovering on the porch collapsed in our Adirondack chair before I could come in to watch.

When I did, I immediately started rooting for the wrong team. I cursed when an aggressive attack by some strong skaters failed to score against…Finland. What? Huh? 

Credit: realismadder

It took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t the Slovakian goalie who was working mightily in front of the goal to keep the puck from going in. It was the Finnish. I was confused, and not only because my senses were dulled by my near-death experience on the running path.

The reason for my mistake was the color of their jerseys. On the TV screen before me were two teams whizzing over the ice at supersonic speeds, one in white jerseys, one in blue, both national colors of Finland. I’m somehow more used to Finland wearing white jerseys, but in this game the team wearing white was Slovakia, a country which shares Finland's national colors, in addition to one other, namely red. As in red, white and blue. On closer inspection, I could make out a small red stripe on Slovakia’s jerseys, hardly noticeable.

Of course, both teams have the right to wear the colors of blue or white on their uniforms. Still, with three colors to choose from, unlike Finland, I’m curious why Slovakia didn’t use red uniforms instead. Why use a color that could also be used by the opposing team when you have another color all your own? (And, yes, I do have too much time on my hands.)

I’ve noticed the same when Finland plays the USA. I don’t recall Team USA charging out on the ice in mostly-red jerseys. I think they’re usually blue.

Anyway, this got me thinking about why the colors red, white and blue are used by so many countries, some 30 in fact, including such diverse nations as Chile, Taiwan, France, or for that matter, Cuba, Russia, and North Korea.

The list also includes many of the Commonwealth nations such as Australia and New Zealand (neither of which, I’m told, is an exceptional powerhouse in ice hockey), nations that apparently came to use the red, white and blue national colors in the same way as America did – they adopted them from the Mother Country.

It’s kind of funny when you think about it. It appears the leaders of the American Revolution weren’t so revolutionary when it came to colors. They could have broken with the past completely and created an entirely new color scheme for a completely new nation, say, orange, green and yellow. Instead, while they did go for a radically different flag design, they retained the old colors of the hated enemy Britain. Go figure.

The Bolsheviks did much better. Seizing control of the Russian government in the October Revolution and installing a government of “workers, solider and peasants”, the followers of Lenin tossed the historic red-white-blue flag of Tsarist Russia onto the dustbin of history.

To replace it, they created, in the vein of centuries-old socialist tradition, a simple red flag, with some tasteful Communist symbols in yellow -- the flag of the Soviet Union. It was a clear signal that this was no longer your dedushka’s Russia. Of course, that didn’t last.

I can’t finish without making a snarky observation about some other anti-establishment political hijinks that are much more recent. The most unavoidable symbol of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been his “Make America Great Again” cap. Trump, no slouch when it comes to marketing and branding, dreamed up this Average Joe headwear early in his run for the White House as a way to spread his insipid campaign slogan.

The caps seem to come in only two colors, red and white, no blue. (Okay, there’s also a camouflage version, but that’s just seems to be an afterthought.) The omission of blue has led someone in the media, maybe John Oliver or just some random Internet wag, to speculate that Trump is confused in thinking that he’s running for president of Canada. Or Japan. Or some other red-and-white country. Poland, maybe? Indonesia?

Why no blue? Does Trump have something against blue states, perhaps? Could be. Or maybe Trump, in a rush to cash in on a campaign that was never meant to last, simply forgot about the color blue when ordering up a consignment of chauvinistic merchandizing. I doubt we’ll ever know.

One quick aside: a Finnish correspondent in the US has reported that he was unable to order a Trump cap for himself because he is a foreigner. That seems to be true, as customers aren’t “buying” a cap, but rather “contributing” to a campaign (for which they get a cap), something that only citizens or legal residents can do.

Illegal residents are, therefore, excluded from buying a Trump cap of their very own. Presumably Muslims, as such, still can.

I can’t imagine either one of those groups would want to anyway. I know I wouldn’t. 

Trump in his cap, showing his colors (no blue!).
Photo: Gage Skidmore

Vexing Vexillology

Leading up to today's referendum in Scotland on independence, CNN has been giving the issue extensive coverage and at some point even trotted out an expert in...vexillology.

I confess, I never knew such a word existed, or even that there was an academic field justifying such an cryptic name, though in truth I sometimes have found myself interested in the subject, on a superficial level. The subject in question is the study of flags, and the precise reason CNN brought a vexillologist into the studio was to discuss what Scottish independence might mean for the Union Jack, the iconic British flag that nowadays makes me think, first and foremost, of Austin Powers. Yeah, Baby!

All kidding aside, the Union Jack encapsulates a lot of actual history, being as it is a “union” of flags from three kingdoms, England, Scotland and Ireland. These neighboring countries with shared histories began, in 1603, to also share the same king, James I, apparently quite the multitasking monarch who also lent his name to the best-known version of the Christian Bible.

The Union Jack: iconic mashup of saintly symbols.

The union between the three kingdoms was formalized over the next two centuries, eventually giving rise to a need for a new national banner, the Union Jack, created by overlaying the crosses of three patron saints, George for England, Andrew for Scotland, and – the only one to spawn a holiday observed around the world by wearing something green and drinking beer (often also green) – Patrick from the Emerald Isle.

The fact that St. Patrick’s cross (basically a big red “X”) remains on the flag nearly a hundred years after most of Ireland left the union begs the question: why would the departure of Scotland require any modification to the Union Jack anyway? Why bother changing it?

After all, with the British “brand” being so closely linked to the Union Jack, maybe keeping the flag as it is, and just happily living with the fiction that the “union” it represents still exists, would be the easiest course. No one has to know.

What is more interesting to me, in general, is the role that the cross of St. Andrew representing Scotland on the Union Jack, and of course on the Scottish flag itself, has oddly come to play in the symbolism of rebellion. I’m sure this is mostly coincidence. Or is it?

The flag of Scotland, bearing the cross of St. Andrew.

At the moment, the cross that is now identified with Scotland’s drive for independence has also emerged, with different colors, as the battle flag for the so-called Federal State of Novorossiya, the proxy state that Russia is apparently trying to create in eastern Ukraine.

The Novorossiya flag, in turn, is strikingly similar to the Confederate States of America’s Battle Flag, which is even today a popular symbol of rebellion for some misguided folks in the US who strangely enough find “honor” in the fact that some Americans were willing to wage war on the United States in the defense of their “right” to own other human beings. A disturbing kind of nostalgia.

Three rebellious movements, all sporting the cross of St. Andrew. Though that might look like a pattern, it is all perfectly random.

Supposedly, St. Andrew’s cross had no special significance for the southern US or, for that matter, racism. Andrew is not the patron saint of lost causes (that, in fact, would be Jude, who brings to mind a catchy tune sang by four lads from the then-still-united United Kingdom).

According to traditional mythology, Apostle Andrew, not wanting to upstage the Messiah by having himself martyred in an entirely copycat fashion, opted to be crucified on a large wooden “X” instead. I’ve read that, likewise, when the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was trying to choose between a flag with the regular upright “Latin” cross of Jesus or one with the diagonal cross of St. Andrew, they chose the “X”, influenced in part by a Jewish Southerner who suggested the more obviously Christian symbol of the Latin cross wasn’t appropriate on a national flag.

CSA Battle Flag: detestable symbol of treasonous rebellion.

If true, I find it deliciously ironic to think that, in this age when many religious Southerners get bent out of shape at any hint that the prominence of Christian symbolism is being threatened, a politically incorrect emblem of the “Lost Cause” cherished by some of the same folks might itself have been the product of a certain political correctness, circa 1861.

While the use of St. Andrew’s cross by CSA rebels was accidental, its use by Novorossiya rebels is completely natural and fits well with a certain kind of religious nationalism. St. Andrew is said to have personally traveled and preached to the peoples living on the north shore of the Black Sea in present-day Ukraine, Russia and Georgia, which is why he was adopted as a venerated patron saint of those nations.

It’s less obvious why he would also be the patron of part of faraway Great Britain. He, of course, never traveled anywhere near the glens, lochs and firths of Scotland, but part of him (literally, pieces of his body) reputedly did end up there, obviously good enough to win a place in the hearts of the Scots – and on their flag.

Likewise, St. Andrew’s cross earned itself a place in Russian naval vexillology. The cross was incorporated in a flag designed by no less than Peter the Great, though basically just a knockoff of the British Union Jack. In the 1990s, as all communist emblems were discarded following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Russian Navy restored the imperial flags, complete with the original logo commemorating the martyrdom of a roving apostle. Back to the future, you might say.

Battle flag of "Novorossiya", retro symbol
for a retro militia.

I suppose the Russian Navy Jack could have been the inspiration behind the Novorossiya militia adopting the same colors for its own flag (blue cross on a red field), though I can’t help thinking that in that choice there also wasn’t a sly salute to the folklore of rebellion.

Back in the 1970s in Finland there was a subculture of young men who styled themselves as rebels and dressed like James Dean. They wore denim jacket and slicked-back hair and were called “diinari” (Deanari, get it?). I recall seeing a photo in National Geographic once of one such young Finn with a Confederate Battle Flag sewn onto his jacket. So strong is the link between the CSA flag and rebellion that, even in a place as far removed from Dixie as Finland, the connection was completely clear. The symbolism was understood.

Maybe that’s true even today in the backwaters of Europe, where raising a flag that, consciously or not, resembles as closely as possible the universal symbol of an ill-fated rebellion seems perfectly appropriate for belligerent rebel misfits who play by their own “rules”.

And by that, I don’t mean the Scots.