Something Green This Way Comes
Ah, on this celebratory day in Ireland I have been struck down with a cold of the head variety. It has hampered somewhat my Guide to St Patrick’s Day in KC
But it’s a lovely morning so I may wander into town - that would be Dublin - to have a goo at goings on. Though with Paddy’s Day being such a big sports day in Ireland, I’m tempted to watch the All-Ireland club finals - both Hurling and Gaelic Football.
How has my St Patrick’s Day in Ireland gone so far? I’ve had sausages (because we call them sausages, not bangers), and I’m defrosting a turkey, or something that looks like a turkey, for dinner. Later I’ll have some spiced beef which I cooked last night. Irish spiced beef. Because as you already know, Corned Beef and Cabbage is not a dish of Ireland.
And maybe I’ll have a drink.
The weather seems to have been lovely every March 17 since the mid-1990s when St Patrick’s Day was reinvented as a festival. Fair play to the organisers for sorting out the weather first, though I admit to feeling a touch nostalgic for our national wind and hail.
Dublin’s parade starts at 7am KC time - you can catch it on O’Connell Bridge via the Ireland.com weather cam. The theme this year, and what we would do without themes, is “Energy”. Yes, energy.
An estimated 650,000 people are lining the route.
I’ll also admit to loving not being in KC this year for Paddy’s Day. I don’t mean that I like being in Ireland - which I do - I mean I really like not being in KC. It’s funny that a bunch of lads from Ireland would start a load of nonsense once they went overseas. I can see why; we’ve all been emigrants and tourists and spoofed it up. But who would have thought it would be believed through generations and grow into something so monstrous?
It’s the little things I like. I like that we call the day St Patrick’s Day, or Paddy’s Day. We never call it St Pat’s Day - that’s just too familiar, especially with a saint from a church most people have walked away from.
Yes you could argue that Paddy is familiar too, but you see that’s gentle self-deprecation. When we emigrated to the building sites of London, we were all Paddy. Notice how we drop the saintly salutation. And March 17 overseas has always been our day, Paddy’s Day. Except in America where it was taken from us and given a woman’s name.
The only female saint we celebrate is Brigid. She brought us Spring when Kansas City was checking on groundhogs. Never, ever, in Ireland is this day called St Patty’s Day. Because men named Patrick are no more called Patty then men named Paul are called Pauline.
If I sound like I’m picking on America, it’s because I am. The Irish also went to Australia, and to Canada, and of course to England. And yes they all celebrate the day in relatively small doses of ugliness, but only in America has it been taken to science-fictional excess.
I have spent St Patrick’s Day in England. In Birmingham where the percentage of the population is comparable to that of Kansas City. And in Liverpool where there are more Irish descendants than probably anywhere on the planet outside Ireland - indeed it was the famine exodus that created that city. And there among Ireland’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, being actually from Ireland and celebrating the day, was a pleasure, a blast.
In America it’s a day to hide. And saying it’s just some fun, that everybody is aware that the celebration has little to do with what it purports to celebrate (not true anyway), doesn’t explain why other countries, with just as much Irishness, don’t do this.
Everybody is not Irish on St Patrick’s Day. Is everybody Christian on Christmas day? Including Hindus and Muslims?
Anyway, I’m off into town now, to laugh at the English people wearing green. Enjoy yourself, if you must.
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