Corona & St. Patrick

I bartended at an Irish pub for a decade, and I was confident that I understood St. Patrick Day. I poured Guinness and Jameson without stopping. When patrons ordered an Irish Car Bomb, I told them that I was offended. I teased them and demanded that they keep it at just “Car Bomb” if they wanted me to make it. I’d tell them about the origins of the Black and Tan. We made it with Smithwicks because we didn’t keep Bass Ale, you understood why after the history lesson I gave you. As you enjoyed your drink, I’d even play you the Wolfe Tones song "Come Out Ye Black and Tans." I served corned beef and cabbage, and shepherd’s pie. At some point, a pipe and drum band marched in and took over the bar. Sometimes it was my cousin’s band. Later the house music went off, and an Irish folk band played on stage. Sometimes it was my other cousin’s band. The step dancers had their time in the spotlight, and everyone wore their wool sweater. I told them to call it a jumper. Since I was a kid, I walked down the block to watch the parade and followed my family into the Hibernian Hall when it was over. I was well acquainted with the sounds and the spectacle of it all. I got it.

St. Patrick Day is funny. The holiday and its adherents face challenges. For me, it started with Immigration Day in elementary school. We represented our respective lineage, and the Scottish kid shook my world when he told me that kilts and pipes weren’t Irish. Then I learned that St. Patrick didn’t expel the snakes out of Ireland and that he might not have been Irish. I found out that no one eats corned beef and cabbage in Ireland. I heard the holiday chastised. People called the Irish drunks and said they had tempers. Okay, I do have a temper, but do all Irish people? Isn’t this a religious holiday? Am I supposed to drink with a priest? Drinking was amusing in college, especially when the Russian guy in my dorm painted himself green and announced that he was Irish for the day. Sometimes it can feel like the bottom is falling out, do I understand this holiday and what are we celebrating?

This year I had a son, and I realized something about the American dream. I’m living it, but it’s not mine, it was my father’s. My dream is for my son to stand on my shoulders and to prosper. Trace it back sequentially, and this dream is Irish. We’re not celebrating, we’re remembering, and maybe the drinking is to forget. How did I get here? There was a diaspora. It went on for centuries and peaked during the Great Hunger. One historian described the Great Hunger as the worst tragedy of the nineteenth century. To say the words "potato famine" is to make a mockery of history. According to the United Nation’s definition, it was a genocide. After the English conquest, British absentee landowners owned ninety-six percent of Ireland. The Irish worked for meaningless wages and a place to stay. They lived on potatoes alone. When the potato crop failed, the Irish starved and fled as ample food, including grains, corn, sheep, pigs, oxen, peas, beans, rabbits, salmon, honey, butter, and good potatoes were shipped out. A policy of mass starvation developed. The depopulation was convenient and welcomed by many landowners who switched from crops to livestock. Those that could leave did. The coffin ships to North America were overloaded and undersupplied. Of the passengers that boarded thirty percent regularly perished. During the Great Hunger alone, two million fled. Of those that remained, one and a half million starved or died of diseases. Overall, the population was reduced by twenty-five percent. These are not just statistics. They were people. Those that survived dreamt of a better life for them and their children.

St. Patrick Day is a religious holiday and its fitting. He is the patron saint of Ireland, and the Irish are traditionally among the most devout Christians. Their faith is what preserved the lives of many, and many more clung to it during their hardships. St. Patrick Day is a day of remembrance, a day to slip a bit of money in your kid’s shoes, and a day to remember those who came before us and what they endured. The world is pretty scary right now, but on St. Patrick Day, we still have much to be thankful for.