An Opinion by David Reagan
Staff writer
For those who might have just as easily guessed St. Patrick’s to be another type of Irish lager, similar to the nationalistic branding of Samuel Adams, this article will be an unwelcome punch to the beer gut.
But if you’re really Irish at all, I’ll assume for the time being that you can hold your own in a fight.
The bulletin boards on the third floor of SE’s Morrison Building say it best. The cutout paper figures depict St. Patrick in full formal catholic garb….standing next to a leprechaun, a four leaf clover, a pot of gold and what I guess to be a ground hog.
Am I the only one who sees the ridiculousness of these Irish symbols juxtaposed with equal representation?
What does St. Patrick have to do with a leprechaun? What a mix of celebrations: alcohol, kids’ arts and crafts and church saints.
I took an informal poll of different people on campus and found one consistency: Nobody knew anything about the holiday, except that we drink on it. It turns out that a pinch as a kid turns into a hangover headache as an adult.
When I asked SE student Jakus Hull what he knew about the holiday, he said, “Nothing. Green? Everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. I got that from the movie ‘Boondock Saints.’”
I told him not to feel bad about his answer because that’s the extent of what most people know.
To get a different, perhaps more objective view, I asked my African friend Angelo Ndilou, from Gabon, what he knew. With a straight face, he said, “Yes, I know about the American’ St. Patrick’s. I know about the drinking.”
My first impression of St. Patrick’s as a child was the same as many – the Party City version, complete with aisles of plastic green top hats and dinnerware emblazoned with four-leaf clovers.
Though, now that I think about it, I bet the green plastic Solo cups were largely purchased by college students. I guess it’s a little more subtle than marketing green shot glasses to children’s mothers.
The second impression I had as a young boy came from the Guinness commercial playing on TV. where several grown men, who apparently still live together, yell “It’s St. Patrick’s Day,” wake each other up, run downstairs in slow motion and with excitement similar to Christmas morning they shove each other out of the way to unwrap the green-colored presents under the keg-tree, revealing Guinness beer.
While our inclination would be to first derive our meaning for the holiday’s Irish roots in Guinness commercials, the real celebration lies in far more than the commercialized and exploited version.
To the average person, St. Patty’s is just another day of the year without actual holiday time off from school or work, not a reminder of any actual history with meaning. But this day has history tracing back to the fifth century.
The story became distorted over time and distance, much like a game of telephone by middle-schoolers sitting in the back pew of an uninteresting church service.
First, yes, you might guess from the title that it has to do with a saint of the Catholic Church, named Patricius (meaning father of the citizens). But actually his real name wasn’t Patrick.
According to a surviving piece of literature from the time period –“The Book Of Ultan”– he had four Latin references, much like given nicknames.
Regardless, his real one by birth was most likely Maewyn Succat according to www.theholidayspot.com. Only later was the common reference coined by followers in his illustrious passing on March 17, 461 A.D.
As a patron saint and historically important figure, St. Patrick has a longer spiritual biography than Ireland itself, it seems.
Most people don’t know that the three-leaf clover was a tool of St. Patrick first, not a symbol of Ireland. He used it to spread the gospel by explaining the holy trinity of the Godhead: The father, son and Holy Spirit are one entity.
It’s rather ironic how we use it now in light of its original purpose.
Just in case your brains are not quite yet drunk with irony, think about how St. Patty’s main purpose as a gospel missionary was to drive out paganism and spread the gospel of Christianity.
In fact, there is old folklore, and even a couple paintings, of him driving all the snakes off the island, but it is not a literal representation. It is the metaphor of him warding off paganism, according to www.history.com. Within 200 years of his arrival, the island was said to have been Christianized.
My point is that I doubt he could have foreseen what St. Patrick’s Day has become: a national day of drinking. Of course, while you won’t find any written absolute of moral objection to alcohol by the Catholic or Anglican church, I certainly doubt they appreciate the association.
Sorry to burst some frothy bubbles, but St. Patrick was not even Irish. He was Anglo-Saxon, probably Welsh.
He first encountered Ireland at the age of 16 when he was captured by Irish slave owners, where he stayed for six years until his escape. St. Patrick went back to his family and became an ordained bishop, according to stpatricksday.com.
As the true part of the story goes, he believed God was telling him to go back to Ireland and speak to the same people who had stolen all those years of his life. Even though he was not Irish he was championed by the Irish as a saint who stood for moral and spiritual values that revolutionized a nation according to www.history.com.
Ever since the beginning of their arrival in the New World, it seems that Americans have developed a problem with exploiting the Irish, ranging from ethnic discrimination to Civil War enlistment to economic profiting– not the least being St. Patrick’s Day.
For example, www.St-Patricks-Day.com was the most helpful website that was pulled up by Google, giving all sorts of information about the holiday, but I soon found out that even this motive was tainted.
At first, the website states that it is there “to become the world’s largest online resource,” but a closer look at the fine print shows its purpose is purely financial gain, “as a perfect vehicle for companies aiming to capitalise on the world-wide media exposure of the Irish……quite possibly the best time for selling & enhancing your brand internationally.” This is despicable.
Still, the worst part may not be that we do it, but why we do it. We justify it as being a part of the only way to celebrate the holiday. That’s simply not true.
When I Googled “St. Patrick’s Day,” the first website link that came up was the Guinness website advertising, “Join the world’s largest party, win a trip to party in Dublin!” This has become the holiday’s calling card for college students.
In contrast, Maeve Binchy wrote in the New York Times, “Twenty-five years ago, Dublin was the dullest place on earth to spend St. Patrick’s Day….But since the mid-1970’s, St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland has been full of fun. We watched what our American cousins were doing and copied it. The bars are wide open, and we send each other silly green cards. There are parades and carnivals all over the country on the Big Day.”
There is a disconnect here. It is not only between the changing ideas of what the Irish holiday means, but also in the culture. This is starting to affect the way the Irish natives celebrate, in turn.
Until the ’70s, there was not a hint of alcohol-smelling breath on the holy day. Well maybe a slight bit, but that’s because Uncle John always hides a bottle away for a rainy day.
In any case, public houses and bars didn’t even open in Ireland on St. Patty’s until recently, as Binchy noted previously. What have we done with the holiday’s image?
Yes, the old untouched topography of Ireland we knew is starting to slowly evaporate as the fog, but does this mean we should completely disregard history? With more visible structural changes, such as cell phones and increasing demand for modern high rises, American influence might just be spreading across the green sloping hills, far beyond the reach of parades.
Binchy said that many tourists come to Ireland now, expecting it’s old visage, but are surprised to find that houses now run on electricity. The image is not what they had in their heads. Yet, they are helping create that image.
Americans need everything fast and we see the slow pace beginning to be a thing of the past for Ireland. It’s starting to bustle with a newfound activity.
Yes, Dublin is the main party spot to go to, but that is only as of recent. It was a quiet city 25 years ago. That is a huge difference considering the day has existed for 16 centuries prior without Dublin’s input to become one giant party or night club.
Is our commercial exploitation of the holiday’s cultural representation to blame for this, or are the Irish to blame for not taking a stronger stand? I believe education is the answer to both of these problems.
A good pastor friend of mine recommended the movie “Far and Away,” starring Tom Cruise, which I would say is a great choice to alternatively celebrate St. Patty’s the right way this year.
The movie storyline follows the travels and hardships of a land-working tenant boy all the way from Ireland to his settling in our very own Oklahoma boomer sooner Territory.
Yes, I actually used boomer sooner in the context of land-rush frontiersmen and not the football team for once. I know; it’s rare. But that’s the truth of Homestead Act of 1862.
You might note how many of the towns in Oklahoma are Irish, ranging from the populated and nearby “McAlester” down U.S. Highway 69, to the deserted oil boom town of “Shamrock” a mere couple miles off Route 66 in between Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
The saying is that if you live in Oklahoma, there’s a good chance you are probably Indian, Irish or both. This is actually fairly accurate.
Like many similar claims further west, the Homestead Act of 1862 promised at least 160 acres of land for those who arrived first to claim it. It drew attention from many immigrants, but especially the Irish.
This overwhelming slice of the ethnic pie graph in the United States was because the Great Irish Famine, better known as the potato famine, had just taken place, leaving the Emerald Island with a million deaths and a million refugees.
In the years prior to the famine, two-thirds of the country had directly depended on agriculture as their job and the potato was a food staple. This lack of income soon led to the biggest divisive factor between the tenants and landowners, as they Irish were still practically living under serfdom.
Well, no rent money meant no land. No land meant they were homeless. Crop failures would soon prove to have economic, political and social consequences for the Irish.
This is why we saw the first influx of Irish-Americans, and hence the first inkling of Irish patriotism. When they arrived in America, they were shunned as aliens, called “micks,” given degrading jobs and portrayed stereotypically in cartoons as “drunken monkeys”. But they organized, as many did, in ethnic subcultures and determined to make a future for themselves.
The idea of Irish nationalism does have residual evidence even today. Our western-culture mentality of America fighting for its working-class jobs and for freedom largely stems from this group of people such as when they fought in our armies during the Civil War. This strong-willed attitude appears, not just in the drunken brawling stereotype, but also in the bravado sense, such as the Ivy League Notre Dame school “The Fighting Irish.”
So, did we rape the Irish connotation for its patriotic potential to promote the manifest destiny of America and then leave the drunkard stereotype to the actual people?
Even President Obama, now trying to claim Irish roots too, is campaigning with a four leaf clover on T-shirts and pint glasses. According to Andy Newman at the New York Times, it kind of backfired when the Irish demographic corrected him angrily with, “Please….a shamrock is three leaves not a four leaf clover!!!” Our culture had made the four leaf clover a sign of luck only as of recent, due to their rarity, not their widespread recognition as common appearances.
The three leaf clover was first used stateside to garner political support of the largest demographic – the Irish. Politicians travelling the country would stick the shamrock in their suit jacket lapel much like the miniature American flag is pinned these days. This appeal of patriotism to audience’s holding the swing vote could be likened to the same way that current President Barack Obama is campaigning with the slogan “African Americans for Obama.”
Much like the display of red, white and blue on July 4 we see the green machine roar its head proudly on March 17 every year.
It’s not a memorial holiday; it’s an exciting holiday of rebirth. Green signals spring, fertility and growth, such as the lush topography of Ireland.
It has simply been capitalized on much like Valentine’s Day cards do. A teacher once told me, “A card says I care…but not enough to really celebrate it with you or tell you in person.” How similar is this to our ignorant display of attitude toward St. Patrick ’s Day?
For a more recent example I’ll use the Nike company. According to www.irishtimes.com we’ve really put our foot in our mouth this time. Nike released a new style of basketball sneakers called The Black and Tan,” which the company intended to name after the well-known Irish alcoholic beverage, a mix of stout and lager.
This would have garnered the usual festive audience, had the Irish not pointed out that “Black and Tan” is also a reference to ruthless British paramilitary force that suppressed Ireland in the 20’s. According to The Irish Times, which first pointed the mistake out to the Americans, it would be the equivalent of calling a sneaker “The Al-Qaeda” in the United States.
Ciaran Staunton, President of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, stated that the Nike move left him speechless. “Is there no one at Nike able to Google Black and Tan,” he asked disbelievingly.
Yes, Nike apologized, saying, “No offense intended.” But is that the point? Do we resign ourselves to ignorance and bliss so that we might enjoy a holiday? There is no excuse to know so little about such a big holiday.
Finally, to clear up one last misconception, leprechauns have nothing to do with St. Patrick or the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.
According to www.history.com, “In 1959, Walt Disney released a film called Darby O’Gill & the Little People…This cheerful, friendly leprechaun is a purely American invention, but has quickly evolved into an easily recognizable symbol of both St. Patrick’s Day and Ireland in general.”
By the way, the color of St. Patrick is blue, not green. In fact, there’s a special shade of light blue named after him because that’s the color he actually wore. Look it up.