Irish For A Day

Really, I’m Irish!  Okay, I’m not 100% but green flows through my blood veins.  It’s March 17 marking the anniversary of the death of the patron Irish Saint Patrick.  Are you donning your green top hats and shamrocks? I’m not wearing anything green.  Furthermore, I can’t even claim my undies are to avoiding being pinched.  I have hazel-green eyes.  Does this count?  Not likely and my son will be the first to pinch me this morning, you just watch and see.

What’s up with the pinching?  This is something I never understood, except it seemed a lot of fun when I was in grade school.  There really wasn’t a clear explanation of how this came to be, other than I learned it was something school kids started.  I suspect it has to do with good versus bad luck.  If you’re wearing green, then you’re lucky and if not…well, then you get pinched, right?

The gentle rolling Irish hills are a lush green landscape. Ireland is known as the Emerald Isle.  Her flag comprises of green – representing the people of the South, orange – represents the people of the North, and white – represents the peace which unifies them as a nation

Saint Patrick’s native home was the British Isles.  A band of pirates kidnapped him sold into slavery in Ireland.  He managed to escape returning to his homeland.  Saint Patrick entered the ministry where he later went back to Ireland to share the gospel of Christ.   That was not only a noble thing to do but sure darn nice.  I guess he followed the WWJD concept.  My top hat is off to the Saint!

In the mid-19th century close to a million Irish immigrants escaped the Great Potato Famine of their homeland and poured into the US by way of Ellis Island.  The luck of the Irish seemed like bad luck initially because the new immigrants did not find favor among their neighbors because of their funny accent and religious beliefs.  Oh, the things history has taught us about prejudice behavior, but as long as the world stands this will always be the case to a degree despite what we’ve learned.

However, the luck…’good luck’ of politicians saw the Irish influence as beneficial.  Some things never change, do they?  There was no denying the large population of Irish citizens in America had the power in their back pocket to sway votes among their peers. As the Irish became organized, their voting blocks became known as the ‘green machine’ helping to swing political candidates numbers.

In those early years, newspapers betrayed the Irish in cartoons as funny, fist fighting drunk monkeys when they took to the street celebrating their heritage.  I don’t get the monkey part, but drunk and violent, I catch.

The Irish are known for their drinking and even to this day, beer consumption on this Irish religious holiday remains popular not only by the Irish but most citizens of the world.

Today many cities across the country celebrate St. Patty’s Day with parades or color rivers green. Boston, Massachusetts celebrated the first St. Patty’s Day in 1737. We know one well-known Irish family from the great state of Massachusetts, don’t we? Don’t mistake those Kennedy’s with this Kennedy. Heritage-wise, yes…maybe! Money-wise, no…definitely not! Get this, the first St. Patrick’s Day parade ever did NOT take place in Ireland, but in New York City in 1762.

NYC St. Patty’s Day Parade

In keeping with my T2Q meme, here are my questions…

1) What fun things did/do you do with your kiddos for St. Patrick’s Day?   One year for St. Patty’s Day, we decided to do something really wacky. Do you remember Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham? I bet you do. Our kids loved these rhyming stories. We made our own version of green eggs and ham on that March 17th many years ago. This isn’t as easy as you would think. We dropped green food color on our the eggs and ham as we fried them up for breakfast. I wish I had a photo to share with you. We used more food coloring than we would have liked causing our kidneys to work overtime to filter out of our system. After we ate our very green breakfast, we naturally had to read the book to our kiddos. It was such fun. To this day, all three of our children will smile when we say, “Do you remember the St. Patrick’s Day we made green eyes and ham?”  This is so wacky, but predictable, we’d stick little four-leaf clover stickers to our shirts to keep from being pinched and at one point in our day, we’d search the yard for four-leaf clovers, usually coming up empty-handed. But, it was fun!

2)  Which do you prefer, root beer or beer?  Definitely, prefer root beer. I can’t stand the way beer smells.  It smells rotten.  I’ve been told drinking is an acquired taste.  If that’s the case, why put yourself through such torture? Root beer is tastier than beer any ole day.  My ole pal, Snoopy loves it!

 

 

Raise your root beer mug…”Happy St. Patty’s Day!”

To find more fun facts for the family, visit Family Education!