St. Andrew's Day is celebrated on November 30 and is a day to celebrated Scottish culture in all its forms. Most people get that day off work since it was designated a bank holiday in 2006. The date of St. Andrew’s Day was chosen to connect it to Advent which begins around the same time.

St. Andrew was a fisherman from Galilee who became one of Jesus' first disciples, along with his brother Simon Peter. According to writings, he attended the Last Supper and witnessed Jesus' resurrection. After Jesus' death Andrew travelled throughout Greece, he was eventually crucified in Patras in Greece around AD57, supposedly because he baptized the wife and brother of the governor. He chose to be crucified on a different cross that Jesus had been crucified (the cross we see on the national flag of Scotland).

One story as to how the bones of St. Andrew ended up in Scotland is that three hundred years after Andrew's crucifixion Roman Emperor Constantine wanted St. Andrew's bones to be moved from Patras to Constantinople. According to the story, before this could be carried out, a monk named St Rule stole what he could to hide them from the Emperor based on a dream he had. The ship he was sailing on was shipwrecked on the east coast of Scotland and the bones were hidden there. Another story is that they were stolen by or sold to the Romans.

St Rule's Tower, which was built to hold the bones of St. Andrew, still stands at St Andrew's Cathedral; but the whereabouts of the bones is unknown. It's possible they were destroyed during the Reformation. During a visit in 1969, Pope Paul VI gave further bones and relics of St Andrew to Scotland with the words "St. Peter gives you his brother”; these are now displayed in the National Shrine of St Andrew at St Mary's Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh.

The national flag of Scotland, (the Saltire) is based on the cross that Andrew's was crucified on. It was made official in 1315 by Robert the Bruce at the same time Andrew was made patron saint of Scotland. He is also the patron saint of Romania, Greece, the Ukraine, and Russia.