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This Irishman Hates St. Patrick’s Day (well what it has now become sadly I’m sad to say)
Today, on the 17th of March, we celebrate the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. It is, of course, St. Patrick’s day. So how will the Irish of modern Ireland and people of nations around the world — with or without Irish blood or heritage — honor the man who brought Christianity to our shores and changed Ireland and Western Civilization for the better? (The conversion of Ireland rekindled the conversion of Northern Europe after the fall of Rome.)
Will people go to a church, Catholic or Protestant? Will they forego churchgoing but say a prayer, or have a meal, in his honor? Will they embrace Ireland and God with thanks for our liberation from the darkness of evil and ignorance?
I kid, of course. We all know what St. Patrick’s Day has become. (And God help anyone who says “St. Patty’s Day” to me — I will beat them with a Hurley.) Rather than celebrating a religious holiday that enlightened Ireland and Europe, the majority of celebrants around the world, be they Irish or not, will mark this feast with an orgy of unedifying drinking, thus living up to an unfortunate national stereotype and explaining why so many Irish people die from liver disease.
On a historical note: St. Patrick’s Day celebrations began in America, where Irish Protestants wanted to celebrate the coming of Christianity to Ireland. (George Washington himself hosted one such celebration.) From there, it exported the tradition back to the mother country. It only became a holiday in the opening years of the 1900s. In fact, it was also a day, in Ireland, at least, when the pubs weren’t open.
Now, I’m not a teetotaller. I like a drink now and again (in moderation, depends on the company). But in Ireland, the worst of the worst come out for this day. Many Irish people, of all religious views, and many who’d have no idea what I’m talking about, along with many true Irish-Americans who witness what I’m sure is standard practice both here and in America.
I’m talking about people who use the man’s feast day to begin drinking as soon as breakfast is over, if they haven’t started the night before. I’m talking of young people who can’t handle their drink turning up at the parades utterly besotted after one or two drinks. I’m talking about young people having sex or using drugs, in public streets, before and after the parade, even in front of children. I’m talking about the vomit on the streets by mid-day – to the point that you have to walk in a zig-zag. I’m talking about going into any pub during the middle of the day and finding people so smashed off their heads that you can’t even chat with them without feeling sick inside.
I’m talking about the people who wouldn’t dream of going into a pub during the rest of the year coming in and ruining it for the rest of us. I’m talking about the awful clothes that turn people into walking stereotypes. I’m talking about drunks who abuse people in a way they’d never dare anywhere else, and then wind up at hospital emergency wards, creating a nightmare for hospital staff. Finally, I’m talking about the abuse to the ears of the Paddy-whackery music.
Some will think I’m a killjoy by nature. But I know people who are so sick of this day they abstain from it altogether. Proud Irish people who hate seeing their nation reduced to a drunkard’s paradise and a capsule-summary of the nastier traits of modern Ireland. Many avoid the pubs and won’t send their kids into town to the parade because of this. Moreover, imagine what St. Patrick thinks of all this – his day, which used to be a holy day when the sale of alcohol was banned – has become a pagan temple to the vice of alcohol, which has destroyed so many thousands of Irish lives, and will at this rate destroy even more in in the future.
I’ve spoken before of the consequences of Ireland becoming more secular. The degradation of St Patrick’s Day is one of them: a deeply disappointing and somewhat despairing happening. Temperance, sadly, is dead in modern Ireland. The Christianity that liberated Ireland is declining, whether slowly or rapidly depends on the point of view. What’s left is the worst of all worlds: the freedom of the individual to indulge in vice with no restraint, and people with no faith that urges them to resist such temptations.
But this island has seen tragedy and despair before. Today at mass, the priest called for St. Patrick to endow this country with faith again. I hope his prayer is heard. There was and is always a cyclical pattern to religious devotion. In the end, God only knows when Ireland will recover. I pray it is in my lifetime. For my relatives’ and descendants’ sake. too.
P.S. No Irish person ever says, “Top o’ the morning.” Or believes in leprechauns. Or hates English people. (Okay, some do). Had to say this, because too many hackneyed films from Hollywood have convinced Americans that we do. We don’t. Oh, and the majority of Irish people loathe the IRA of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, and dislike Gerry Adams.
Published in General
I surveyed people tonight to see if they knew who St. Patrick was, the first ten did not. Of course this was a Baptist church.
As a American of genuine Irish descent, I concur heartily. The orgy (for lack of a better term) of drinking and stupidity seems to grow with each year, and the current level of silliness seems to be a recent phenomenon. When I was a child (a scant 30 years ago) the revelry was much more subdued: a parade in Boston and in Chicago, lots of green knick knacks for sale in stores, and an excuse to don some green attire and buy corned beef on sale (not that I need an excuse) – nothing much in the greater scheme of things, and something you were expected to celebrate only if you could actually point to and name your Irish forebears.
At this point, despite my first and surnames, I try not to bring the day up except with the family who will actually appreciate it. I’ve got a hurley tucked away somewhere, and like you I’m tempted to wield it tomorrow.
Well, they’re all germans and Scots anyway.
Paddy, thank you. I will, as I have mentioned before, wear orange.
I hate green, and never wear it. I don’t celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day in any way. I look forward to going to Ireland someday. So tomorrow, I’ll pick out one of my set of “Irish Country” novels by Patrick Taylor (who lives on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia), and read stories about a country doctor in Northern Ireland in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Highly recommended.
And what did you read on January 25th?
The same could be said for Saint Valentine’s Day too. Many a holy feast have been desecrated from their reflective internal value to simple sanctionings of different kinds of gluttony.
Always considered the pomp and indulgence of the celebrations an embarassment and Green beer has never crossed these lips. Mother was of Welsh-Irish heritage, which seems a tad odd, then on the male side there is a long list of Vikings, Gremanic and various barbarians.
Appreciate ones roots as it were and for what they represent.
Seems odd that the current campus craze is that any celebration of a culture is Cultural Appropriation, therefore an unpardonable sin. Sounds like a rather empty life effort.
MLH, on January 25th, I was deep into Dr. Paul Rahe’s book on Sparta. It was fascinating, and I learned a lot.
To deal with your dislike, do you drink? (Couldn’t resist, please forgive me, I agree with you, even though I’m not Irish.)
Wrong answer. Try again.
MLH
RushBabe49:MLH, on January 25th, I was deep into Dr. Paul Rahe’s book on Sparta. It was fascinating, and I learned a lot.
Wrong answer. Try again.
*****
Eating haggis.
I just want to take a second here to point out the patent superiority of Oktoberfest. Sixteen days. Cannot be ruined by drinking, as it was always a drinking holiday. Carry on…
That’s always the wrong answer. I don’t care what the question even is.
I’m as Irish as Paddy’s pig – not your pig, Paddy – just an expression my family always uses – and I agree completely. I’m Irish-American; both sets of great-grandparents emigrated here late 19th century. The Day was always special for us as St. Patrick’s Day was my father’s birthday. We would go to Mass, wear a touch of green and get together with extended family in the evening for Irish music and corned beef and cabbage.
As I grew older, I’d bring Irish Soda Bread made from my great-grandmother’s recipe to my workplace. It was delicious and popular and I’d tell funny Irish stories, talk about St. Patrick and growing up in an Irish Catholic family. Some years, I’d go out for a wee nip at one of several Irish Pubs in Philly. Then everything changed.
Suddenly everyone’s Irish. It’s a free-for-all: an excuse for boisterous drunks to get louder and drunker. There are pub crawls, over-flowing Irish pubs, throngs of drunk green lunatics parading through streets, screeching horrible ‘Irish’ songs. It became downright dangerous to walk or drive with so many inebriated people on the loose. And the vomit, always the vomit.
So no more. It’ll be Mass, then our traditional dinner with the few relatives remaining who enjoy it the old way.
But the horror of the cultural appropriation! It triggers me something awful, makes me feel unsafe. I demand counseling & remuneration.
I steer clear of the “festivities” now that the kids are older and don’t want to see the parade or march in it which was all completely innocent fun when they did it. Now it’s more about sports- one of the kids has a big match today so that’s the centrepiece. I’m enjoying the day off work. I might have a couple of drinks later depending on the outcome of the game. No shamrock, no binge, just good clean fun. It’s easy enough to avoid the bad stuff.
Paddy, the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the US also have much to do with the fact that St. Patrick is the patron saint of the Archdiocese of NY, where the largest parade is held.
That makes it a Solemnity in the Archdiocese, a day of high holiness, one of the days during Lent when Lenten fasting is relaxed.
Today is my son’s birthday, and we will pray together and celebrate.
St. Patrick, ora pro nobis!
Aye… never celebrated the secular version of Saint Patrick’s Day even as a child (Italian Parish where I frequently heard the refrain better “dead than red (auburn hair)” as a taunt in the school yard and they all wore green on March 17 without a hint of irony) but I will go to mass with my family as usual and pray for the redemption of Ireland, the Irish and the conversion of people who think it is a time to be disgraced and debauched in the name of a Saint.
God save Ireland and Saint Patrick pray for us.
p.s. The Provisional wing of the IRA were Communists and criminals.
In case anyone is interested, a great book on the coming of St. Patrick to Ireland for young people is Flame Over Tara, by Madeleine Polland who also wrote many other historical fiction books.
I married into an Irish family so we will be having our ham, cabbage, and potatoes tonight. The kids will probably pull out the St. Patrick book we got from Voice of the Martyrs. We won’t be going to any parades to see people promote their sexual preferences, because I don’t think that was Patrick’s message. And we will probably avoid public celebrations because there will be too many drunks.
Yes, when I first met my wife’s grandmother I did notice the picture of Lady Thatcher on her dart board.
Paddy, I understand. But you can have both a religious and a secular celebration. For the secular this might be the only contact they have with a religious experience. My hope would be that it would plant a seed, which hopefully will blossom. If there were no secular celebration then it would be completely ignored by the non-religious, and therefore no seed planted.
When I woke up today and realized what day it was, my first thought was with that wonderful St. Patrick’s Breastplate prayer, attributed to the saint, though I guess we’re not sure. It’s too long to post the entire thing but you can read about it and the whole thing here. Here’s a portion:
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, in Christ our Lord.
I don’t drink, but love St. Patrick’s Day, and was utterly charmed by your country when I visited last fall. It is a beautiful island, and I love the music, poetry and the lovely people. I celebrate today by posting the Irish Blessing on facebook. It’s probably also a product of commercialism or something, but I don’t really care. I love it.
May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.
This year I added a photo of me kissing the blarney stone and ended with:
May you kiss the Blarney Stone more gracefully than I.
While reading ___________________.
I’m totally with you on disliking the bacchanalia of the modern St. Patrick’s Day*, Paddy, but I can at least see something good about it. Namely, a country in which it’s socially acceptable for everyone to run around saying “Kiss Me I’m Irish” on one day is a country in which it is socially acceptable to be Irish the other 364 days a year.
We will know that we have defeated racism against African Americans when we celebrate Martin Luther King’s Day by eating fried chicken, getting drunk on Colt 45, and saying “Kiss me I’m black.”
*I did love my engineering college’s St. Pat’s tradition. The week of the holiday, “snake pits” would appear on campus — little bits of the yard fenced off and filled with plastic snakes. The freshmen frat brothers would carry sheleighleigh and during breaks between classes would climb into the snake pits and yell “Who do we love? St. Pat’s! What do we hate? Snakes! What makes the grass grow green? Blood! Blood! Blood!” They would then have to bash the snakes with the sheleighleigh once for every year St. Patrick’s Day had been celebrated on campus — which is now over 100 years.
Don’t forget to add: And may you be in Heaven an hour before the devil knows you’re dead…
Didn’t know that part. I like it!
No way! Really?
I remember dating a young lady back in the 70s in New Haven Connecticut and going to the bars on the Irish side of town to have a pint of the good stuff and listen to some music. A hat was passed around collecting for the “Widows and Orphans.” We instantly went on high alert because both of us had family who left Ireland because they got involved with things they shouldn’t have. Not that they were ever sorry about it, mind you. We left every time the hat appeared knowing that most likely the money wasn’t going to any Widow.
Too many over here don’t really understand what went on in Ireland in the past. They are too far removed from it and family stories died out. Thats how we celebrate Saint Patricks Day. We brew our own Porter, have a few and tell stories about our Grandparents and Great Grandparents and dream of the day we can go back and re-introduce our selves.
It will be a quiet day in the Watt household. There is a difference between freedom and license. I avoid large crowds, especially large crowds that fortify themselves on copious amounts of alcohol. As a former police officer my nonsense quotient scale for drunken and stupid behavior is at zero on that scale.
I will simply reflect on the fact that it was Irish monks and St. Patrick that kept the lights on in Europe.
I might spare a moment to think about Hadrian’s Wall that was built to keep the Scots out of Roman Britain. Unfortunately it did not keep the British out of Scotland after the Romans left Britain.
I will offer up one toast: Slàinte Mòr, slàinte mhòr. Good health, great health.
Well, as you say, the feast of St. Patrick is a celebration of the coming of Christianity to Ireland, so you’d expect the focus to be on Christianity, not solely on Ireland. If you were going to celebrate Ireland itself, you’d probably pick your holiday based on some day of independence, as we do in the US – maybe the date in the 1920s when the Free State actually went into effect, or maybe the Easter Rebellion, or something similar. (Tough to pick, since the republic was unsettled for much of that time.) In any case, St. Patrick’s Day is a Christian feast.
But let’s not completely scorn some practicalities. After all, for St. Patrick’s Day, corned beef and Guinness is selling at a big discount around here, and since I enjoy both, I’m willing to look the other way for a couple days.