It's St. Patrick's Day today. Not that we take any notice of it around here. People seem to assume that, because I'm Irish, that St. Paddy's day is a big deal for me, and that I weep with longing for the "ould sod" at the mere mention of the Guy in Green. I have to remind them that I've been in Canada since I was four months old, and as fond as I am as the next guy for an excuse to knock back a brew, this doesn't mean much more to me than that. I don't wear green, I don't go out drinking and I never say "top o' the morning to ye!".The Mister's family is mostly Irish, despite their Scottish last name, and I think they're more into it than anyone I'm related to.
When my parents came to Canada in the early 60's, they were gobsmacked by the way St. Patrick's Day was celebrated here. In Ireland, it was a religious holiday; everyone got the day off school or work and they went to Mass and thought about What They'd Done. The pubs weren't even open. Imagine their surprise that in North America it was seen as an excuse to drink green beer and dance on tables and otherwise break out of your WASPY penitentiary. It was like if you went to Singapore or somewhere and found out that Good Friday, or Christmas Day was the biggest party night of the year, and everyone made like it was a "Girls Gone Wild" video.
We work on a busy street in the middle of town, which has a number of bars very popular with the university crowd. This year, since St. Patrick's Day falls on a Monday, last Saturday was "St. Practice Day", and many people started the celebration a few days early. There was some action on the street; scantily dressed revellers in various states of inebriation staggering from bar to bar, and the occasional well-meaning soul who wandered into our salon, thinking it was a bar. ("Hey, check it out! No lineups! Let's go!") Last year, since the day fell on a Saturday, it was like somebody let all the animals out of the zoo..... The Tattooed One kicked a couple of guys off of the salon's rooftop, who saw it as the perfect venue to smoke a joint, and we saw a line up at an Irish bar when we went into work at 9:15 in the morning, and the whole day the show just got better and better. It certainly enlivened an otherwise mundane day at work, let me tell you.
I once asked my mother why we didn't eat more of the food she and my dad grew up with, like colcannon, and champ, and she said that one of the reasons she had moved 3,000 miles a way was so that she never had to so much as look at that stuff again, let alone eat it. So much for tradition. We did eat plenty of brown bread , which I will happily make and scarf down all by myself without sharing. My parents liked their smoked salmon, and had it occasionally as a rare treat. I was assured for many, many years that it was awful stuff and that I'd hate it and they were doing me a huge favour by not letting me have a taste. I think I was about 16 before I ever got any. My dad liked to eat something called "black pudding", which is a traditional Irish sausage, and like all sausage, one is better off not exploring it's contents too closely. (It's not bad, once you put you mind onto not thinking about what you're eating.)
We get some nice cards and greetings from our family overseas every year, which is nice. It makes St. Patrick's Day a little less like a festival of debauchery and a little more like a cross between St. Valentine's Day and Christmas.
The girls' school will occasionally have something about St. Paddy's day, a special theme in music class or an art project. (I wonder what the Muslim and Korean kids make of the whole thing.), but all in all, it seems to be largely an excuse to liven up an otherwise boring month.
Even if I'm not a big fan, I can't argue with that sentiment.
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