Last modified: 2005-08-11 by phil nelson
Keywords: rules for displaying flag | law |
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I noticed when I lived in Europe, Italy to be precise (in the beautiful city of Bergamo) that flag display is much more rare than here in the US, where flags are displayed abundantly and in every conceivable fashion.
Well, that depends very much on which region you live in. I think the two extremes would be Germany and Norway.
Germans in general seem to be afraid to display their flag, still because of the trauma of WW II. Moreover, a German waving his flag in the Netherlands could get lynched (so to speak), and I think that if he would do that in France, local people wouldn't be very happy about it either. I cannot remember I ever saw a German flag at a German home.
In Norway, flags are raised literally for every occasion, including birthdays, Christmas and Easter. And on their national holiday (17th of May), it is the only thing you can see. The reason for this is that Norway is still a 'young' state, that is, it still wants to confirm itself as an independent state, and hasn't had problems like Germany has.
In the middle, you can find countries like for example Belgium, the Netherlands and France, where flags are displayed occasional