This is my first – and likely last – MOT. So I’ll start with a brief digression: March 16th is St. Urho's Day, so “Happy St. Urho’s Day!” to the Finns out there. You may be my only friends after this.
I freely admit I’m biased and cranky about March 17. I don’t care for St. Paddy’s Day. When I wrote a comment about it last Monday, Joy of Fishes challenged me to “set the record straight” today. But I’m not trying to set the record straight here – I’m expressing my opinion, and I’m sure you’ll feel equally free to express yours.
Boston – I‘ve always wanted to visit because of your great role in the Transcendentalist, Unitarian and Abolitionist movements. I realize after this I may not be welcome, but I love you anyway.
I googled St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S. and was really surprised to find out that the first parade was in 1762. Since I wasn’t around, I can’t say what the celebrations were like then. I can say, in the 60-plus years I HAVE been around, St. Patrick’s Day in America looks like a cheap gaudy lampoon of Ireland to me.
For thousands of Americans, the St. Patrick’s Day parades and plastic shamrocks, cartoon leprechauns and green beer are probably all they “know” about Ireland.
The next surprise – St. Patrick wasn’t Irish. He was born in Scotland to Roman parents. At sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates, and taken as a slave to Ireland. He escaped a few years later, reunited with his family, but had visions that led him return to Ireland and convert the country to Christianity. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity – the three-in-one nature of his God.
I couldn’t find any connection between St. Patrick and green beer. Accounts say he was a devout man who lived in poverty by choice. I think he’d be shocked by these celebrations of his name day, and likely regard most of the shenanigans as pagan backsliding.
My heritage isn’t Irish – I have lots of Scots and some Welsh ancestors, and one of my pet peeves is the use of “Celtic” interchangeably with “Irish.” There are Celts on the Iberian Peninsula, in France, in Scotland and Wales, and lots of other places whose cultural contributions are just as “Celtic” as those of Eire. I wear a large pewter thistle pin on St. Patrick’s Day – few people get its significance, but if they ask…..
Just what IS celebrated on St. Patrick’s Day U.S.A.? Not the life of St. Patrick, not the glories of the Book of Kells, not much of the wonderfully rich traditional music of Ireland, not the great poets, not the beauty of the land, and certainly not modern Ireland.
What’s on American television, in the parades, and in the bars? A kind of caricature of Ireland – too much drinking, songs like “Danny Boy” – words written by an Englishman who was never in Ireland! – or worse, those horridly sappy American-Irish ditties from the turn of the last century – Sure, a little bit of Heaven – NOT!
And well within living memory, the Irish Republican Army used St. Patrick’s Day to raise a lot of money from drunken Americans to finance the bombings in Northern Ireland and Britain. St. Patrick would have wept.
Every nation on Earth has a dark and bloody side to its history – a lot of the greatest songs and poetry are sung and chanted about battles lost, and ages of sorrow. And at some time or other, every group was oppressed by somebody else. The Scots and the Welsh got beaten down by the English too. But to the best of my knowledge, their American descendants aren’t coloring food and drink blue for St. Andrew’s Day or red for St. David’s Day, and I fervently hope they never do.
My issue isn’t with Ireland – it’s with the Americans who put on this annual “ignoblery.” A lot of them aren’t even remotely Irish, except on March 17.
Surely Ireland and Saint Patrick deserve better than this?