St Andrew's Day Date 30th November each year. 

St Andrew's Day is November 30. St Andrew's Day is a bank holiday in Scotland but not in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. If November 30 is on a Saturday or Sunday, the bank holiday falls on the following Monday.

Andrew was a fisherman from Galilee and the first disciple of Christ. He is believed to have been martyred by crucifixion in Patras (now part of Greece) on 30 November in the year AD 60 although some say the date was 70 AD. Regardless though of the correct date he was feared and hence crucified by the Roman governor of the time who had him crucified on an X-shaped cross known as a Saltire Cross and it is this shape that is reflected in the Scottish flag.

Although St Andrew never visited Scotland some of his remains can be found in Scotland with a variety of tales to explain this. The version preferred by most historians is that the relics were brought from Rome by St Augustine in 597AD as part of his mission to bring Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons. In 732 they were brought from Hexham to Fife by Bishop Acca. The relics were held at Kirrymont, which was later renamed St Andrews. An alternative version is that when Constantine ordered Andrew's relics to be moved to Constantinople, an angel appeared to St. Rule (or Regulus) in a dream and told him to take some of the relics to the ends of the earth for safekeeping. He obediently took a tooth, an arm bone, a kneecap and some fingers from Andrew's tomb and sailed north with the remains until he was shipwrecked on the east coast of Scotland. The spot at which the ship was wrecked became the site of the town of St. Andrews.

In 1879 the Archbishop of Amalfi in Italy (where the bones had been brought in 1453 after the fall of Constantinople) sent to Edinburgh in Scotland what was believed to be the shoulder-blade of St Andrew and in April 1969, Pope Paul VI gave another relic, part of the skull of St Andrew  to Cardinal Gordon Gray, at that time Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. The relics of the Saint are today displayed at St Andrew's altar in the Metropolitan Cathedral of St Mary in Edinburgh.

Andrew was first recognised as an official patron saint of Scotland in 1320 at the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath an appeal to the Pope by Scottish noblemen asserting Scotland’s independence from England.

The patronage of Saint Andrew covers fishmongers, fishermen, gout, singers, sore throats, spinsters, maidens, old maids and women wishing to become mothers.