(SB) - St. Patrick’s Day is on the horizon, and I thought it would be interesting this year to look at elements of the holiday that you might not be aware of. My family wears orange on St. Patrick’s Day because our roots are in Protestant Ireland, “the orange men” rather than the green which represented historically the Catholic Irish, named for the priest, St. Patrick. Wearing orange on a day when others wore green always raised questions among our friends, but our ancestor, Peter Bell was Protestant and remained so throughout his life. We have no record of when Peter immigrated to Canada, but at the time it was easier for the Protestant Irish to immigrate to Canada, a province of the United Kingdom, rather than into the United States. Peter and his wife Alma (a Scot) raised their family of nine on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada. My grandmother, Pearl Bell, my mother’s mother, was the second oldest in the family. Pearl has just completed the eighth grade when her mother Alma Bell died in childbirth with her ninth child. The oldest child in the family, Nellie Bell, was already in normal school to become a teacher and so the family decided that Pearl Bell would not go on to high school, but instead would take over life on the farm, raising the six younger children. It was not until my grandmother was 38, a confirmed spinster, that Pearl Bell left the farm to marry an American farmer and to raise her own family, including my mother, Helen Scarbrough Krell. The baby of the family, Ethel Bell, born as her mother was dying, went with her sister Pearl to America and lived with Pearl and Harry until their own daughter Helen was fourteen years old. The aunt and the niece shared a bed for those fourteen years and remained close until Ethel’s death many years later. The family remained Protestant Scotch/Irish throughout their lives.
Up until the mid-19th century, most Irish immigrants to Canada and to the United States were middle class Protestants. It was not until the “Great Potato Famine” in 1845 that over one million starving and uneducated Irish Catholics poured into the country to escape starvation. Despised for their Catholic beliefs and unprepared to do any work other than the most menial, these Irish Catholics suffered greatly, particularly in the cities where “No Irish Need Apply” signs prevented their employment. Over the next 35 years, Irish Patriotism among immigrants led to the rise of “Irish Aid” societies, designed to help destitute Irish immigrants. Soon, Irish Catholics took to the streets in American cities on St. Patrick’s Day to celebrate their heritage where newspapers still portrayed them in cartoons as drunk, violent monkeys. Yet, as their numbers grew, Irish Catholics began organizing into voting blocs, known as “the green machine,” using St. Patrick’s Day parades as an opportunity to show their strength in politics and soon those parades became must-attend events for burgeoning political candidates. The power of the Irish politically came to a head when the first Irish Catholic President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected in November 1960. Today, the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York is the world’s largest civilian parade with over 150,000 participants. Each year more than three million watch the parade which takes more than five hours to complete.
Over 100 additional American cities celebrate the holiday including Chicago where every year since 1962 the river is dyed green. Initially over 100 pounds of vegetable dye was used and the river ran green for days. Today, the city’s pollution control officers use only 40 pounds of dye in order to minimize environmental damage and the river remains green for only a few hours. Although Chicago maintains that the idea of a green river was their idea, the city of Savannah, Georgia, where the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade was held in 1813 insist that the idea was theirs. In 1961, Savannah attempted to dye their river green, but their dyes only turned the water an ugly puce and no other attempt for color on the river was ever made. Today, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations occur on March 17th in Ireland, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore and even Russia. Popular meals for the day include Irish soda bread, corned beef and cabbage and “champ,” an Irish potato dish made with butter, spring onions and milk. Although Lent prohibits the consumption of meat by Catholics, the prohibition is often waived on St. Patrick’s Day, enabling the celebrants to dance, drink and feast on the traditional Irish meal of Irish bacon and cabbage.
The Irish have celebrated St. Patrick’s Day since the 9th or 10th century, but the first parade took place in American on March 17, 1601 in the Spanish colony of what is now St. Augustine, Florida. More than a century later, homesick Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched in New York City on March 17, 1772 to honor the Irish patron saint. Today, such celebrations are ubiquitous to America. Regardless of whether you honor the holiday by wearing green or orange, drink green beer and enjoy traditional Irish foods or simply observe March 17th as an ordinary day, I wish you the Irish blessing of “May your troubles be less and your blessings be more, and nothing but happiness come through your door.”
