I have to be honest, I write this title not so much in the “Oh My!” excited or surprised way but more in an “oh my…” with my head down and shaking way.
I grew up wearing green and drawing rainbows and hunting for four-leafed clovers just like every other American kid I knew. That is what St. Patrick’s Day is about, right?
Well, for me…not anymore. As I’ve browsed Pinterest and Facebook and blogs over the past few weeks, I’ve been inundated with St. Patrick’s Day things. If it’s a green food item, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. If it’s rainbow, leprechaun or shamrock thing, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. But guess what, I never saw artificially green food, leprechauns or four-leafed clovers during our two plus years in Dublin and frankly, I hardly ever saw a rainbow despite the days, weeks, months of rain (mostly because we hardly saw the sun).
It’s not that these things are bad, per se. It’s more that I find them irritating because they’re superficial. They’re completely missing the point of what St. Patrick’s Day really is, it’s a day that was established to celebrate St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. And while it may not be a religious holiday in Ireland anymore, it is still a major holiday. Everyone gets the day off work and aside from the tourists and maybe college students, it’s not about partying and getting drunk, it is a family holiday (more on that here).
There is a parade in many cities (we attended the one in Dublin our first year) but these parades celebrate Irish pride because that is what St. Patrick’s day is still about: Ireland.
And that is what I want my children to celebrate: their former home.
I’ve started a yearly tradition of having our friends over for a St. Patrick’s Day party. But you won’t see me serving corned beef and hash because I never once saw it on a menu while living there. Last year it was Fish Stew, Shepherd’s Pie, Brown Bread and Banoffee Pie (recipes here) and this year I did Beef and Guiness Stew, Colcannon (potatos with kale and cabbage), Brown Bread and Banoffe Pie. These are Irish recipes, food you find in restaurants, pubs and more importantly homes.
Sure, we all wore green and I decorated with cheap green shamrocks from the dollar store, and last year we did shamrock and green crafts but my kids know why we do these things, because they represent the Emerald Isle and St. Patrick. They know that our former home is important to us and while they don’t remember much (Sugarplum not at all), we don’t want them to forget the importance of the place that took us in for so many years.
We’ve spent a lot of time the past 2 1/2 years remembering, talking about and reminiscing about our time in Ireland with our girls and Honeybun took it upon herself to write the Life of St. Patrick (like she did for Pilgrim History at Thanksgiving). She worked really hard to read books and do research to learn his story and put it all together and I hope that maybe it will be shared with other children on this day that is meant to celebrate Ireland and its patron saint: The Life of Saint Patrick
