St Patrick’s Day. The day people celebrate Irishness, real or imagined. I’m 25% Irish but I don’t celebrate this day. Green beer, wearing of green clothing, and parades. A holiday with firm Irish religious roots that also allows anyone to get drunk and make a fool of themselves on a weekday. A day that people, Irish or not, have already planned their celebratory feasts, drinking binges, to be followed by subsequent hangover days spent eating Lucky Charms in their underwear. I won’t be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with my gang of leprechauns. Now if it was a holiday to honor Neil PATRICK Harris, he’s amazing. ...he’s ‘awesomeness’, then I’d join right in. I’d be right there to say “ It’s St. Patrick’s Day, we need to include green beer and drinking at 10am to our plans!”
My Irish ancestors showed their appreciation of their native land in the usual Irish way by getting out of it as soon as they possibly could. I come from an Irish Mother who was 50% Irish and 50% Welsh. With this mix, she had one hella temper. But.....St. Patrick's Day was a big holiday in my house. The night before my brothers and I would hang up our stockings and in the morning they'd be full of beer. We would always have my Mother’s Irish Beef and Potato Stew. I’m not sure if that stew was in remembrance of the great potato famine in Ireland that sent many of my ancestors to America or not, but it was a ‘given’, my Mom’s stew on St. Patrick’s Day. As I think back, even though I tired of that stew and I barely let a stew touch my lips today, I am ever so thankful she never choked that corned beef and cabbage down our throats. My Irish ancestors would probably disown me for saying this, but I hate corned beef and cabbage. I don't like either one that much alone, and together, they're even worse. In fairness to my mother’s cooking of the Beef Stew I will quickly add that I also hated my father’s Lutefisk, (lipeäkala) which being a Finn I was forced to eat at least twice in my life. I am a self proclaimed ‘picky-as-hell-eater’ and I would gladly eat worms and insects before I would eat lutefisk. Well, heck, I have eaten worms and insects. I draw the line on lutefisk. I can still hear my father’s voice "Just have a little Sis, it’s a Finnish delicacy.” For non-Finns, lutefisk is a dried whitefish (cod) prepared with lye. Hardly considered a culinary delight. My grandparents left Finland to escape being "Russified''. Personally myself, I think it's quite possible they were really trying to escape lutefisk. I understand that my poor ancestors ate lutefisk to stay alive during those cold long hungry winters, but it remains a mystery to me why they brought it with them to America. This is the land of milk and honey, right? I don't see lutefisk as having a reason to be here. I can go no further on the subject of lutefisk if I wish to eat anything at all today.
Who's this Patrick anyway? The patron saint of liquor distributors? Here's the real truth, he didn't get rid of snakes in Ireland. He just got rid of the ones he was seeing. It is a known fact that he was born in Britain in the 4th century. A Roman. The list of Irish saints is long, but in that list no other figure is so human, friendly, and lovable as St. Patrick who was an Irishman ~ only by adoption. When the Irish say that St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland, what they don’t tell you is that he was the only one who saw any snakes! My theory: If St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, I think they swam to Washington D.C. and ended up in the White House.
In fairness to St. Patrick's Day I will admit that I didn’t celebrate St. Urho’s Day yesterday either. That’s a Finnish patron saint. Ok, I admit, a completely made-up saint. I should have been sitting around wearing the purple and green with a wine glass in my hand. Finnish legend says St. Urho chased the grasshoppers out of ancient Finland, thus saving the grape crop and the jobs of Finnish vineyard workers. He did this by uttering the phrase:
“Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen”
roughly translated:
“Grasshopper, grasshopper, go to Hell!”
Finns. They are so blunt. No mincing of the words. “Go to Hell”...I love it.
So in essence on March 16th St. Urho drove the grasshoppers out of Finland. On March 17th St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. Copycat! The Finnish people were sick of the green beer and Irish hoopla in March, and decided they needed their own holiday on March 16th. The St. Urho tradition is carried on in many Finnish communities, sometimes merely as an excuse to add an extra day of rowdy celebration to the St. Patrick’s Day festivities. We all know, well, us Finns anyway, that Finns love to party. When it comes down to partying, the Finns run away with the prize. They devote themselves to the serious business of 'enjoying themselves.' In many Finnish-American communities St. Urho’s Day IS the celebration, and St. Pat’s feast day is merely an afterthought, the day to sleep off the hangover. Gotta love the Finns for making up their own holiday. And why not? All holidays are basically made up and/or have changed incredibly over the centuries. Why not celebrate that which is fake?
How funny, now I am soooooo thinking of my Irish mother and my Finnish father ~ two very head-strong people from very different backgrounds. And all of a sudden I am sooooooo smelling my mother's beef stew! This is not my imagination.
So, here’s my question: Why isn’t our beer color coordinated for all holiday occasions, instead of just St. Patricks Day? Why not red beer for Christmas? Red beer for Valentines Day? Green beer for Earth Day? Orange beer for Halloween? Red, white and blue beer for the Fourth of July? Pretty pastel pink beer for Easter?
St. Patrick's Day: The one day of the year when the meaning of 'Going Green' shifts from saving the environment to polluting our major organs. The one day where full blown alcoholism could possibly go undetected. The day that we worship someone who possibly banished non-existent snakes from Ireland.
Yeah, yeah, I am Irish. No harm. No foul. No harm/no foul to any of the Irish. Irish can laugh at themselves. I laugh at myself all the time. I credit that to being both Irish and Finn.
In celebration of St. Patty's Day I will watch Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Liam Neeson in the movie GANGS OF NEW YORK. I will remember the sad fact that the Irish men immigrating to America were enlisted into the army as soon as they stepped off the boat. That was just so wrong America! They had not even been given the chance to complete their 'declaration of intention' of even becoming an American citizen before you sent them off to war!
What? No facebook slamming? Ahhhh, what the hell. Now that I said that, ever notice that ‘What the hell’ is always the right decision? Ok, here it is:
Facebook is a substitute for real human interaction, which explains its popularity. People just don't want to interact anymore. So, you 'Facebooker's' out there in Facebookland, send me an email once in awhile. Let me know you're alive. I never hear from you anymore. I'm not going to mention names. You know who you are.
Enjoy your day. I know I will.
