Erin go blah
Kasia March 17th, 2007
I’ve never ‘gotten’ the whole St. Patrick’s Day mindset. I don’t think that ‘everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day’ (or Polish on Fat Tuesday, or French on Bastille Day, or whatever other faux homogeneity we’ve concocted to try to foster brotherhood); I’ve only been out drinking once on St. Patrick’s Day (it was highly overrated – come to think of it, so is going out drinking); and why some bishops feel the need to issue a dispensation for people to eat corned beef when St. Pat’s falls on a Friday is beyond me. But that’s just me being a grinch, I suppose.
I remember the first time someone wore a “Kiss me, I’m Irish” pin on St. Pat’s. It was my friend Carrie, in high school. I think I looked at her funny; and I think she threatened to pinch me for not wearing green. For the record, there are only a few shades of green that suit my complexion. So I don’t have a lot of green in my wardrobe to begin with, and The Big Seester can, I’m sure, attest that I would forget my head if it weren’t firmly attached to my shoulders. Unless I plan carefully, I do not remember things like “Oh, today is the last day before the Christmas break; I should wear something festive” or “It’s July 4th – I should wear red, white and blue.” It’s just not high in my mental priority index. So this isn’t just me slagging St. Pat’s.
But this year I really outdid myself, albeit inadvertently. Last night I gave TBS a ride home from work, then ran to my place, fed the cats and loved them up a bit, then started tossing clothes and passport into a bag so I could get on the road to Canada. Completely forgetting the date, I packed my orange-and-white-striped tee shirt, thinking “Oh, this will look nice with my brown fleece jacket.” (And it does.)
It didn’t hit me until The Canuck and I were out at breakfast this morning at a popular university hangout, and I saw several girls walk in wearing shamrock headdresses. That’s when I realized my gaffe.
Yup. I’m wearing orange on St. Patrick’s Day. I know the Irish flag has orange in it as well as green, but there IS another, much less innocuous connotation to wearing orange. At least I’m not marching through the streets of Belfast or Edinburgh, carrying a banner that reads “The Protestant Faith I Will Defend.”
The Canuck, bless him, laughed and said “So? You’re not Irish. You’re English!”
Fair point, sweetheart. I’ll just stay out of Corktown unless and until I change shirts.
Good thing London doesn’t have a predominantly Irish neighbourhood like Corktown in Detroit or Cabbagetown in Toronto …
And besides, the sort-of green t-shirt I wore today was unintentional. I didn’t remember it was St. Patrick’s Day until you mentioned it.
Even more beside the point, St. Patrick wasn’t even Irish by birth … he was an import.
Sure, St. Pat was not Irish… but he SAVED the Irish–that is good enough for me and my beer drinking-shamrock hat wearing-kiss me I’m Irish button fastened-pinch you if you wear ORANGE-self!
Happy St. Patty’s!
“The Big Seester can, I’m sure, attest that I would forget my head if it weren’t firmly attached to my shoulders.”
AHEM. All I’m going to say is: Wearing slippers and clutching several pairs of pantyhose…
And you are NOT English – you are Cornish. Don’t allow The Man (England) to absorb us like that! Plus we are less than 1/4 of any kind of British Islander, whereas we are mostly German and Polish.
And I LIKE being Irish one day a year, and you know me better than to think drunkeness has anything to do with it.
Next year I think I’ll try making corned beef and cabbage, with soda bread…
Mmmm.
And I LIKE being Irish one day a year, and you know me better than to think drunkeness has anything to do with it.
Fair enough, but I still think it’s hogwash. I’m willing to bet that no one took the Irish flag off of Kosciuszko’s statue for Fat Tuesday, nor yet stuck a paczka in his horse’s mouth.
I think we have plenty of REAL common ground as human beings that we should be seeking, not just going for phoney-baloney National-Brotherhood-Week-ish feel-goodism.