Does St. Patrick's Day have any meaning in your life?
Is it a holiday that holds any significance for you? If so, what?
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Yes. It means I’ll have to put up with a bunch of bloody green bullshit.
Stay off the streets and sidewalks to avoid the drunks.
I was raised Catholic and there are the nice stories about banishing snakes and the three-leaf clover explaining the divine trinity.
But if you’ve seen my question about St. Stupor’s Day you have an idea what it seems to mean these days.
Yes. It means I’ll be staying far away from the festival downtown that day. I can’t stand being around stupid drunk people making fools of themselves.
Yes, but in the opposite direction of everyone else.
First, I am part Irish, but I don’t really celebrate it, or most of my heritages. I am a genealogist, and recognize the large number of groups in my background (Irish, Scottish, German, English, Bohemian), but I really only call myself an American.
Second, I work for the phone company as a cable splicer.
Years ago, I had to go into a splice that was worked on 5 years earlier by an Irishman. He bragged about what he had done at the yard, so I know he did this.
I guess you should know that some telephone cables have color coding on the wires. There are 25 pairs of wires, all color coded, and bundled in groups with more color coding. You know that the first pair of the seventh group is pair 151, and is a blue-white pair in the Red-Orange group.
Well, the above mentioned Irishman had a few too many before working, and decided that, it being St. Patricks day and all, he would change the group markers to all green. The result is being unable to decode which group has which wires. I spent a day or two undoing his work, before I could perform my own work.
So, I celebrate St. Patrick’s day as Splicer Appreciation day.
St. Patrick’s day has absolutely no meaning for me. St. Patrick is like St. Christopher; they’re both mythical. The holiday is just an excuse to get drunk, wear green, and eat and drink green things. I associate green with alge build up, not my non-Irish heritage.
It’s my grandmother’s birthday and that is the only reason I remember it. If there can be any money generated because of the holiday for people, more power to them.
No meaning for me, but I do celebrate it every year by cooking myself corned beef and cabbage, which I’m doing as I type this.
Anyone like to drop by and join me for a hearty meal this afternoon?
Not as St Patty’s Day but as my younger son’s birthday – yes! So glad to have him in my life!
Yes, it does mean something to me. St. Patrick’s day holds many good memories for me that even drunken hordes cannot destroy.
My mother is Irish and I remember listening to all the classic Irish songs like Danny Boy and The Wild Irish Rover (a favorite of my Dad’s even though he wasn’t Irish). We only had one 2 or 3 albums of Irish music but on St. Paddy’s day we played them to death!!! Then we would all sit down to eat a dinner of corned beef and cabbage. Sometimes we must have had Irish soda bread but I’m not sure about that.
At Catholic school my pastor Father Murphy was Irish and he was born on St. Patrick’s day so every year the whole school had a “surprise” birthday party for him. He always acted surprised, lol. We practiced for weeks then sang our hearts out. There was one family of girls that all knew how to step dance so they would dance on stage for us. The party was in the school gymnasium. I loved this yearly ritual.
One year I went to the St. Patrick’s day parade in New York on my lunch hour. I was in my 20’s then and I’d never been to it. I love parades and especially drums and bagpipes. As I stood on the side of the road watching the bagpipers march by with a big smile plastered across my face, one of the bagpipe players glanced at me and winked!
Right now I’m listening to Irish music on Thistle radio. I’d love to go out and see some Irish music performed live or see some step dancing but most bars are too rowdy and it gets tired fast. So I’ll stay home. We won’t be having corned beef and cabbage because my husband doesn’t like it. Maybe I will watch The Secret of Roan Inish one of my favorite movies. Probably everyone on Fluther knows that by now :)
Usually I’d celebrate by drinking, but unfortunately I have to study and it’s a Sunday, so I’m not going to be doing anything special today :)
It’s not celebrated around here, although Québec has its equivalent, at least in terms of having a holiday known for getting plastered. The Saint-Jean Baptiste holiday, which lasts about three days. When I lived in Winnipeg, Saint Patrick’s was also not celebrated, not sure where in Canada people do. So nope, I’m not doing anything special. as if I need some holiday to tell me to get drunk, anyway haha
No. As a professional drinker I indulge no differently than any other day of the year.
As an atheist I don’t find myself beholden to saints.
It’s a day to celebrate having a bit of Irish in my background, so I wear some green and have corned beef. But the drinking part seems to bring out all the amateurs that didn’t get drunk enough on New years Eve.
The best corned beef sandwich requires Jewish Rye Bread.
@Pachyderm_In_The_Room I’ll be over, make sure you have some good mustard!
No, except that it’s one of the few nights I stay home from the bar…
It means that if I forget and don’t have something green on, I’m liable to get pinched.
I used green marker to draw shamrocks on my students hands when they forgot, pre- teens being what they are.
@zenvelo and @marinelife—I’ve got genuine Jewish rye and some wonderful, rough-cut mustard. Hurry over. It’s going fast.
@Sunny2 oops! I forgot to wear the green today! I better go change my shirt.
No. I look like I could be Irish, so green looks good on me, but I make a point not to wear it on St. Patrick’s Day. I don’t celebrate any other holidays, either, because none have any significance for me.
My last name is Irish and I have a tiny bit of Irish genetic material in me but there is nothing significant for me on St. Patrick’s Day.
None at all, cept that people drank a lot today at the restaurant I work at so I made more money. I’ll take it.
Not any more. I used to dread it when I was in school, because the bullies used it as an excuse to go around pinching people, and saying “Oh, I didn’t see your green blouse”
Nice try St. Patrick’s Day, but I don’t need a reason to drink :)
It used to be a fun holiday I looked forward to. I am part Irish, so that made it a little extra special.
Today was different for me. It was a difficult day I’ll never forget. It will be hard to forget the sadness I felt today when I’m reminded of this day in the future.
Guinness is on sale. Which is awesome, because I usually can’t justify the price of a six-pack, as much as I love the stuff.
I’ll make corned beef and cabbage later this week, when cabbage is down to 13 cents a pound instead of the current 80. And it’ll taste just as good.
I did wear my Guinness t-shirt and green jeans yesterday. I never – EVER – drink green beer. And I know better than to go out partying on holidays.
It’s a very big tradition in my family. My late brother used to dress up as a leprechaun and be chauffeured from bar to bar with a partner of his.
But as for the tradition, it does include some drink, a lot of song, and a celebration of family. In earlier times, it was a time for the Irish in the US to celebrate the culture and family they had left behind to come here.
BTW, corned beef is more Irish-American than Irish. An Irish “boiled dinner”, or one-pot meal, for a festive occasion like St Patrick’s day (actually a religious holiday in Ireland) would probably be boiled ham and cabbage, or a pork loin boiled with cabbage and veggies. The corned beef tradition started in the US, when the poor Irish would find themselves in the less expensive parts of town, along with other immigrant ethnic groups, such as Jews. The local deli or butcher shop was more often than not a Kosher establishment, so a good corned beef brisket was the closest they could get to having ham or other pork meats.
^ No such thing as “Irish Food”, we just feel lucky when there is food to be had. Amirite?
Well. there is soda bread and colcannon.
Of course. The above is something I’ve heard Frank McCourt say from time to time. before he died, obvi.
@Seek_Kholinar “We just feel lucky…”
That probably went for many immigrants, Irish or otherwise!
I would have to consult an encyclopedia to find out what it is.
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