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St. Pat’s Day Always Has Special Meaning

By Tom Anselm

This Saturday will be the official 40th anniversary of inarguably the most significant event of my life. March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, was the day I met my lovely wife Jill.  A lass of the Quinn clan, sure and she stole my heart away, that night and ever since.  But enough about this Austro-Hungarian kids Irish luck.

   As I focus on this holiday, I always wonder why it has held such deep meaning for others as well. I know not everyone met their life-love that day.  Why do over 50% of the US population go crazy on this date, and even people in such far off locales as Japan, South Korea and Australia?

As many of you no doubt know, good old St. Patrick was a British guy when Great Britain was under the rule of Rome.  Back in the 640’s, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates, then escaped and came home to become a priest.  He was called by God to return to Ireland and for the next 30 years, he hung out amongst the mostly-pagan tribes of that land, bringing them to Christianity.

Folklore says he used the green shamrock, so abundant in the hills there, to teach the concept of the Trinity.  As for driving the snakes out of the Emerald Isle, well, that’s probably just a nice story.  Unless you see it used as a symbolic knocking of that dirty little snake, the “Divil Himself”, out of the land.

So despite that bit of history, what’s the big deal about today’s local festivities on the 17th of March? Well, it seems that it has a lot to do with the Irish diaspora, which I just found out refers to ethnic communities living outside their homelands.

It applies more to Jews outside the Holy Land, but can be used in the Irish story as well.  These expatriots of the Mother Land took on the date of their dear Patrick’s death as the link to acknowledging their heritage in their new settlements.

The Irish had it rough back home, with oppression by the English who took over their lands, installing their own rule over the farmers.  And the event of the Great Potato Famine in the early 1800s didn’t help things.  As many as 3 million Irish immigrated to other lands at that time, many to North America, from 1845 to 1900.

An exaggeration, perhaps, but evidence of the large presence in the new land.  many Irish of Protestant faiths, better know as Scotch-Irish, came to settle in the Appalachian regions, even as far back as the early 1700s. However, those who came to the urban areas were mostly Catholic, in hopes of finding work and a new life.  They were instrumental in the building the Erie Canal, the Statue of Liberty, and the eastern portions of the transcontinental railroads.  But their overall poverty led the men to the most dangerous of society’s professions: policemen, firefighters and miners, with the women going into the homes of the established wealthy as domestic servants.  The stereotype of the Irish cop and young lass as maid are not without foundation.

They held to their traditions, and their faith.  And like many immigrant cultures, they needed to stick together to survive.  The day of their beloved St. Patrick became the reminder of their past, and a celebration of their present good fortune, always with hopes of future prosperity that was not known to them back across the ocean from  It became their anchor in this new land.

Our town boasts two celebrations, with the long-established parade downtown on the Saturday prior to March 17, and the Dogtown neighborhood event on the actual date.  This year, of course, they coincide, and both will take place this Saturday, which will be, as one writer put it a century ago, “a day of feasting, wearing of the green, and copious consumption of alcohol.”  Not to mention a great day of family fun.

Sure and this Germanic boy with nary of drop o’ the green in his veins will be celebratin’ with kith and kin on downtown streets as we have done since 1979.  This year, instead of riding in a carrier on my back like that first year, son Tim will be walking with his family in the parade, sporting his kilt, as he just joined the parade committee.  He is a Quinn, after all.