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National Tartan Day – U.S.
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Today is a day to honor your Scottish ancestors—if you’ve got ’em!
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Why April 6? The date goes back a loooong time, to April 6, 1320, when the “Scottish Declaration of Independence” was signed by Scottish nobility in Arbroath Abbey.
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Why “tartan”? Tartan is a plaid pattern of criss-crossing horizontal and vertical stripes in various colors. Scottish kilts almost always have a tartan pattern. The pattern is not called “plaid” in Scotland; a plaid is a tartan cloth worn slung over the shoulder, or a tartan blanket. Different tartan patterns, with distinctive colors, used to be associated with the region of Scotland in which it was made, but since the mid-1800s, the different tartans came to be associated with different clans (families).
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Find out more about Tartan Day here.
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Find out more about tartans here.
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Try making your own tartan, or perhaps a Scottish stick puppet.
