Saint Pat

There are some holidays have grow beyond original designated day. Christmas is the best example where decorations have been spotted just after Labor Day and the first big holiday sales can't even wait for the Thanksgiving dinner to be cleared off the table. Saint Patrick's day has experienced to a smaller degree a similar holiday bloat.   

Last Sunday, several large America cities had their Saint Patrick's Day Parade, a full week ahead of the holiday. Throughout the week there will be green beer, two for one drink specials and at least one tavern will have an Irish wake with coffin races. Some time back I was sitting with an Irish immigrate and he was horrified at the bacchanalian excess and the displays of oafish Celtic stereotypes. He talked about his rural village in the west of Ireland where the holiday was a much more somber affair with a special Mass in morning, a soccer game in the afternoon and dinner at home, or with friends at the pub, of boiled ham and cabbage. According to him corned beef  is as Irish as sushi.

The very first Irish immigrates to Boston held a parades as far back as 1737 and New York in 1762. Large waves of immigration started in the mid 1840's because of the great potato famine. When you really have too much to eat it's difficult to wrap your mind around the idea of the potato as a staple food. Here in America we think of the potato as a funny vegetable that's best made into French Fries. The famine was so devastating that over 150 years later there are still less people living in Ireland today then before the famine.    

Saint Patrick's Day in America became a day of solidarity and defiance. Even though it says on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty "give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses..." the sight of thousands upon thousands of starving, impoverished and traumatized people scared the rest of America into believing the nation will be destroy by the hordes of foreigners. The issue of Catholicism only made the Irish seem even more alien to the Protestant majority.      

If anything can be said about Ireland, it is culturally very Catholic. As most Catholic countries have a patron saint, Ireland has three. Of course Saint Patrick, then Saint Bridget and last but not least Saint Columba. Out of the three I kind of like Columba, he's a patron saint of poets. In the days of the sixth century it was customary to open you door to any poet. In exchange for food and lodgings the poet had to recite for his dinner. Many of the Irish Lords took to imprisoning the less entertaining poets that failed to amuse them. Saint Columba convinced these Irish Lords to take up the Christian spirit and be a bit more forgiving. The poets were set free.

It's said Saint Patrick had banished all the snakes from Ireland, which was a smooth move being there never were any native snakes to start with. Others have equated the snakes with the Pagans. Supposedly when Saint Columba was exiled to Scotland, he tried to banish the Loch Ness Monster. It's difficult to say if this makes the loch Ness Monster more or less real or if this was just a case of saintly rivalry.

 

A good story and a little bit faith should never up ended by logic. In way it's like Saint Bridget's cross. You might have seen these woven four legged squares of reed or straw over a doorway. The superstation says it protects the house against fire. I know of one person, she is a scientist and not a Catholic but above her door is such a talisman. She would be the first to say it's silly but don't touch it because so far it's working just fine.

There was once an advertising campaign that had a tag line "you don't have to be Jewish to like rye bread". These days you don't have to be Irish to like Saint Patrick. The holiday is has become an international phenomenon where everyone can pretend we are all Irish and therefore we are all universally the same pool of humanity.  There's even a Saint Patrick's Day celebration in Tokyo.

One of my neighbors was born on March 17th and his good Catholic parents named him Patrick even though they are from Poland. And Joe, somebody who can trace his Italian heritage all the way back to the Roman Empire, has a very involved list of must do things for Saint Patricks. Part of the ritual includes seeing the movie the Quiet Man starring John Wayne. Not only is this Joe's favorite film but he feels it one of Hollywood's best. That's high praise from Joe who is both a filmmaker and a film snob.

With movies about being Irish, people tend to split up into two main groups. Like Joe, there's a traditional audience for the Quiet Man.  I'm in that other, and probably smaller group, that looks forward to seeing The Commitments. I'm told there is another camp of supporters for Waking Need Divine.

The really big Saint Patrick's Day event will be the party at the home of Tom the Collector of Everything. His parties are legendary and it's rumored that in the past bands had offer to paid Tom for the privilege of performing at his place.  

I can remember one year after a night of music, dancing and drinking -we all got together to watch the sunrise. Someone recited a bit of James Joyce and Yeats. There was a whiskey toast and a convoluted sermon that Saint Patrick was forced to banish the snakes because "snakes have no feet, therefore they had no soles to save".  Like so many other things in life, it kind of made sense -if you didn't think about it too hard.