Paint Saddy

Well, it’s that time again – Saint Paddy’s Day. Amazing really, what the day inspires – from massive street parades with green beer to the most unlikely people – Genghis Khan, that sort of thing – discovering that they have Irish ancestry hence it is ok to wear lurid green t-shirts, hats, ties and, (God help me), male and female briefs with stupid slogans – “Kiss me, I’m Irish.” or “Top of the morning to you.”

I broke down recently, for the first time, ever.   Really. I promise. I actually bought St. Patrick whatdymecallit – gimcracks? – from an outlet here imaginatively and (honestly called) The Reject Shop – Why Pay Too Much?.

A pack of four small, moulded plastic hats in bright green with tight elastic chin string cost $3. Anyway for the past week or so, The Reject Shop – and possibly such places as The Five Dollar Store – have offered an array of Irish themed crap while the TV here has bombarded viewers with ancestry ads offering family searches back over many generations.

So, I beg to ask, is St Paddy just for the Irish or is he a “Kissable Everyman” for all comers.

What have we done to deserve this? Are Irish people, gender indiscriminate, so cuddly adorable that they deserve to be smothered with kisses like some sleepy koala cub, or cheeky kitten? And is it anything actually to do with Saint Patrick at all. How does that reflect on Irish people in general? Does it apply to other nations’ National Days?

                        Country                                 National Day

Ireland           17 Mar St Patrick’s Day

USA                 04 July Indolence Day

England          23 Apr St George’s Day

Scotland         30 Nov St Andrew’s Day

Wales              01 Mar St David’s Day

France            14 Jul Bastille Day

Italy                02 June Festa della Repubblica

China              01 Oct National Day

Vietnam          02 Sept National Day

Belgium          21 July National Day

Australia         26 January Australia Day

Does anyone in Australia give a tinker’s curse about Belgium’s National Day (and vice versa) and do the Scottish go out of their way to celebrate the festa della Republica? Yet punters, (including myself this year) really do buy ridiculous paraphernalia (green bowler hats, scarves, commerative plates and plaques, t-shirts, key rings, dolls, fake red hair and beards, hideous plastic shillelaghs and grinning leprechauns sitting atop spotted toadstools) otherwise such price conscious emporiums wouldn’t stock them, I suppose.

How much junk is produced for France’s National Day for example, – model guillotines, and plastic strings of onions? Are mini dragons or bravely waving plastic or ceramic flags sold in bulk for other National Days. Who, except perhaps the Americans who actually go so far as to dye their beer green for March 17, would treat their national drink with such disrespect as to add food colouring. Imagine the French dying their wine green or blue!

Ok, so Paint Saddy’s day is both a Feast Day – and a Holy Day of Obligation! (Roman Catholics in Ireland are obliged to attend Mass) – but does that mean we deserve (unreservedly?) to be kissed? So, my point, labouriously, is this, why are Irish, and not specifically other nations, to be kissed on their National Day. Not reviled, despised, thanked, rewarded, recognised, applauded, awarded but kissed? How did this come about?

Is it the culture, the music, the quaintness, the far flung western isle sort of thing, the heavy Arran-knit sweaters or is it more likely that 17 March falls conveniently halfway through the period known as Lent, when Christians “voluntarily” beginning a period of penance by refraining from something or other. In my childhood, it was giving up sugar or chocolate (later it was cigs and the pints) until the breakout on Easter Sunday with chocolate rabbits and eggs, However, on St Paddy’s Day, the traditional Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol were lifted for the day, which probably has done more to encourage and promote the Saint Patrick’s Day tradition of alcohol consumption in terms of Messrs Guinness & Jameson than any other thing.

Maybe that’s why the Irish are kissed? Because we found a way to have a bit of a knees-up in the middle of a drab penitential period.

I’ll definitely make an effort (not much required, actually, if the truth be known) to drink a Guinness on Paddy’s Day- either draught in some non-local pub or drink the elegant long cans sedately in my own garden. I’ll probably have a whiskey too, a Jameson, for old time’s sake, I’ll tell myself. I’ll pin up the green plastic mini top hats so thanks Paint Saddy, or Naomh Pádraig, as I knew him when I was a kid.

Here are a few misconceptions about Ireland’s Patron Saint?

He never drove the snakes out of Ireland, as there were never snakes in the island. He is responsible for starting this idea of the ‘island of saints and scholars”. Possible an accomplished womaniser and not too adverse to accepting a back-hander from local chieftains apparently, as, at his trial, he was accused of both. He certainly raised the ire of the British heretical bishops following the Pelagian branch of Christianity at the time while he reviled slavery and its widespread practice.

I don’t think he ever left the “blessèd isle” from when he arrived in his second coming, as it were, in 432 until his death in Four Sixty something A.D. I’ve always admired perseverance, dedication and effort and I’d have to give the Saint full marks there.