Interior Design Dayton Ohio
St. Patrick’s Day: An American-Irish Holiday
In Ireland, the most devout Christians celebrate the feast day of Saint Patrick with morning mass and a quiet family dinner of lamb stew and bread. Here in America, we dress up in our best green sweaters, line up with thousands of others along city parade routes and proceed to the nearest bar for a dinner of corned beef and cabbage, with a pint of Guinness to wash it all down. To some, this Irish holiday is a sacred tradition that should not be exploited with the moniker “Everyone’s Irish on St. Patty’s Day!” To others, March 17th is a celebration of the culture of Ireland and a clinging onto of symbols that remind the homesick of their motherland.
Some people are annoyed at how the Irish holiday becomes a tourist-type attraction that has little to do with Ireland and its rich cultural traditions. “The corned beef and cabbage thing makes me laugh,” says Yvonne Ivory, a Dublin native who lectures at San Diego State University. “Other things annoy me,” she adds, saying that the Blarney Stone is something reserved for tourists only. “The myth is if you kiss the Blarney stone you become eloquent. I’ve never heard of Irish people kissing the Blarney stone. And I’ve never seen green beer in Ireland.”
Today, the Irish holiday becomes a celebration of what it means to be Irish, but people tend to celebrate in different ways. During the Irish famine of 1845-1850, over 1 million people died of starvation and disease, while hundreds of thousands of others emigrated to communities around the world, including the United States. Unfortunately, the Irish did not receive a warm welcome in America, land of the free. “They had these signs: ‘No Irish Need Apply’” explains Jim Farrelly, an Irish professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio. At first, the Irish would just take any job they could get, but over the years, their communities thrived and they became more economically secure. As a result, Saint Patrick’s Day became “a day in which they celebrated their Irish-ness, and also their success and their American-ness,” explains Ninian Mellamphy, a professor at the University of Western Ontario.
The Americanized version of Saint Patrick’s Irish holiday has made it back to Ireland, says Mary C. Kelly, a professor at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire. “It used to be a very church-focused event, but in the last 10 years, it has become much more commercialized and Americanized.” She says this probably has to do with an eagerness to lure tourists during a chillier, rainier time of the year. “It’s a reflection of the fact that the Irish have become very wealthy in the past decade,” Kelly explains. She also believes Irish who have tried their luck abroad and returned back home are bringing a lot of their American traditions back with them, where it’s intermingling with the Irish culture. “Some would be aware that they’re bringing what you might even call a new culture back there. Others wouldn’t — they would see it as their own personal interpretation.”
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