Orange? It must be Holland!

In the grip of World Cup Fever the Orange of Holland is clear for all to see. Everywhere people where bright orange shirts and even bright orange cowboy hats (!!!). Orange is the dutch symbol of national pride and signifies the House of Orange, rulers of the country. The dutch people love to wear it to show their fierce loyalty. Just near where we are staying is this bar which covered the entire outside of the building with orange pvc, and covered it in painted graffitti. It is truly an amazing sight.

It is frighteningly bold colour that denotes aggression tempered with cheerfulness. It’s the colour of the setting sun with all it’s power and beauty. It’s the colour of fire. The dutch show their total lack of taste in displaying it everywhere.

For me, coming from Britain, it has rather shocking connotations that create a totally different feel from the fun in Holland. My family are from Glasgow and before that Northern Ireland. We from a Protestant family, part of the ‘Plantation’ of Northern Ireland. This started as far back as Oliver Cromwell (1599-1688) who gave his troops tracts of land in Ireland to pay them off at the end of the English Civil War. Thus started a conflict that persists in Ireland still.

The situation was further engrained into popular mythology by the involvement of King Billy, as he is known. King William III of Orange (1650-1702) was ruler of Holland and, in order to defend Holland from the French, became involved with a struggle for the English, Irish and Scottish thrones against King James, a Catholic. He prevailed at the famous Battle of the Boyne in Ireland and became the saviour of the protestant/loyalist cause in Northern Ireland.

So, bizarrely, the colour of fun and pride in Holland has become a colour of hatred and bigotry in Northern Ireland.

So while I celebrate with the dutch football fans I remember the deaths and the hatred over hundreds of years involving the Loyal Orange Order in peculiar homage to a dutch King. But understand it… no, never.

(Thanks to Cheta Urmila for the photographs from Holland.)

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