It's that time- St. Paddy's Day has arrived!

Saint Patrick’s Day is right around the corner. Or as we call it- St. Paddy’s Day. Rivers are going to be dyed green. 5k and 10k’s of little green men and women wearing top hats and tutu’s will be held during the month. Wal-Mart started selling ‘Pinch me, I am Irish’ shirts on Valentine’s day. And bars are receiving their shipment of extra glasses from Amazon in anticipation of the biggest holiday for beer. I am already planning my meal of Corned Beef and Cabbage with Soda bread- which is currently all on sell at Fred Meyer’s if you are interested.

It is interesting that this country is such an avid participator in the holiday seeing how when the Irish first started arriving in droves during the 1845 devastating potato blight in Ireland, which is refer to as the ‘Great Hunger’, the country was not very accommodating to them. Nearly a quarter of the Irish nation came to these shores because there was no where else to run too. And yet, at the time, these immigrants were looked down on as disease-ridden, unskilled, and a drain on the welfare budgets

The disease-ridden claim is actually quite accurate. Ireland is known for its 40 shades of green, however at that time in history- the green was staining the mouths of those who were trying to survive by feeding on the clumps of grass in a frantic effort to survive. The country had survived off of potatoes for years, as John Keating wrote in his book Irish Famine Facts- ‘the average adult working male in Ireland consumed a stiffening 14 pounds of potatoes per day, while the average adult women would eat 11.2 pounds.’

While there is no way that any doctor in the U.S. would deem this safe, potatoes are full of nutrition, and are very easy to grow in a small area of land. Heck, go buy a couple 5-gallon buckets from Lowes and fill it was dirt and potatoes seeds- and you are set for the year! But take away that small area of land, as the British Protestant landowners did, and couple it with a strange potatoes disease that is described as a rotting red-brown mucus as a lethal pathogen, and the Irish were faced with typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis, and cholera as a constant enemy knocking at their doors.

I know what you are thinking, why didn’t anyone try to help them? Where was the English government in all this, since they were the ones that owned the land? Didn’t they have a morale obligation to help the Irish? Well, no they didn’t. You see, Britain at that time supported the Laissez-Faire Capitalism or better known as the Free-Market Capitalism thought process, which literally means ‘leave us alone. This meant that the government should not, and would not, get involved in the economy, and instead allowed individuals to freely carry out their own economic affairs- which is a great prospect if you are on the wealthy side of population.

This idea is manifested in writing as shown in the London News in March 1849-

“Great Britain cannot continue to throw her hard-won millions into the bottomless pit of Celtic pauperism,”

 Charles E. Trevelyan, the British civil servant in charge of the relief effort for Ireland, even viewed the famine as a divine solution to Irish overpopulation as he declared:

“The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated.”

The Irish exodus is considered to be the largest single population movement of the 19th century. The potato famine killed over 1 million Irish, but over 2 million fled the small island in hopes for a better future somewhere else. They spent the last of their meager savings on the 3,000-mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean too the U.S., crossing in vessels where adults were given 18 inches of bed space, and children only half of that. These ships were commonly referred to as ‘Coffin Ships’ because nearly a quarter of them died while at sea- the bodies wrapped in cloth, weighed down with stones, and thrown overboard.

If they made it through the ghastly 4-week journey, they were not coming off the ships breathing in the fresh air of freedom, they were searching for food! Barely strong enough to walk across the street, they had no money or energy to dive in to the competitive world of the U.S. Let’s face the facts, Americans are like the snooty teenage girl and boy groups in high school. The ones who formed a pack of friendship based on fear and intimidation against anyone new or poor. Unless you have proved your worth, you were not worthy of consideration in to the secret society of U.S. citizenship. And then on top of being sick, cold, scared, and poor- the Irish were Catholic. At that time, you might as well put on a black cloak of doom and praised the unholy halls of hell, because the is what level you were considered to be.

Why did Americans hate Irish Catholics? And I think that we should address this question because at the same time that the Irish were flooding on to the U.S.’s shores- so were an equal number of German immigrants who were facing the same hatred- because of religion.

And for this question, we need to dive in to the history. The original colonies were founded because there was an exodus to the new world to flee from the Catholic church and all that it represented. Feelings of distrust toward the Vatican had not softened in the two centuries since the Mayflower arrived on the shores. So scared were the Protestants that the Vatican was making a run on the U.S. for total control, that by 1849 there was a clandestine fraternal society of native-born Protestant men called the ‘Order of the Star-Spangled Banner’ in New York that wanted a land of ‘Temperance, Liberty and Protestantism’. Other groups started growing and within a few years, the ‘Know-Nothings’ partisan group grew in numbers and political seats.

Jay P. Dolan writes in The Irish Americans: A History that

“once in power in Massachusetts the Know-Nothings mandated the reading of the King James Bible in public schools, disbanded Irish militia units while confiscating their weapons and deported nearly 300 poor Irish back to Liverpool because they were a drain on the public treasury. They also barred naturalized citizens from voting unless they had spent 21 years in the United States.”

There are reports of Jesuit Priests being tarred and feathers, Catholic churches being burnt to the ground, a German Priest who was killed in Louisville, Kentucky while trying to visit a sick parishioner. It went so far that a marble block gifted by Pope Pius the IX (9th) for the Washington Monument was tossed in to the Potomac River because John F. Weishampel suggest that the stone would be used as a signal from the Pope to launch an immigrant uprising to take over the U.S.

The Irish fought back. And they fought back smartly. They went to the poles. They voted in higher proportion than any other ethnic group. They knew first hand what it was like to not have control over their future because of someone’ else’s decisions, and they were not going to do it again. They would find their path in this country, by being placed in positions where they could have some control.

Their dedication to voting and the political system helped to propel William R. Grace to become the first Irish-Catholic mayor of New York City in 1880 and Hugh O’Brien the first Irish-Catholic mayor of Boston four years later. A generation after the Great Hunger, the Irish controlled influential political machines in cities across the United States and were moving up the social ladder into the middle class -

“Being from the British Isles, the Irish were now considered acceptable and assimilable to the American way of life,” Dolan wrote.

It took years and dedication, but here we are- all Irish on March 17th!

But let’s get to some interesting facts about St. Patrick’s Day that a majority of Americans don’t know about:

The first Saint Patrick’s Day parade actually started here in the U.S. It was held on March 17, 1601 in a small Spanish colony now called St. Augustine, Florida. Because Florida is what I think about when I think Saint Patrick’s Day! This so makes sense. It does if you remember that this is not a ‘Irish Holiday’, but a Catholic holiday and the Spanish were strict and devoted Catholics.

That Shamrock that everyone loves to put on their windows, or wear as a symbol of their Irish support has a few different meanings, depending on what you’re researching. One, St. Patrick used the Shamrock to explain the holy trinity. Two it could symbolize re-birth, since they appear at the beginning of spring. Or three, it is a sign of Irish nationalism that the Irish started wearing to show their displeasure with English rule.

The famous Irish music that we all love to love in March, you know what I am talking about- the month were every American is trying to sing ‘Danny Boy’, like we know the words or the meaning- well after being conquered by the English, and prohibited to speak their own language, the Irish, turned to music to help them remember important events and hold on to their heritage and history. During her rule, Queen Elizabeth I had even announced that all artists and pipers were to be arrested and hanged on the spot. She would be so mad right about now if she knew that Irish music had 7 different channels on Pandora!

We have to mention the Corned Beef and Cabbage that I am even planning to make- it is actually an American meal. Irish immigrants living on New York City’s Lower East Side substituted corned beef for their traditional dish of Irish bacon to save money. According to Delish.com-

‘brining was a technique of the Eastern Europeans, which is a way of salt-curing meat. And the corn? Well, "corned" has nothing to do with corn but instead refers to the corn-sized salt crystals used during the brining process (In fact, corned beef is sometimes referred to as "pickled beef," as you are quite literally pickling brisket with this particular brining process.). The corned beef was paired with cabbage, as it was one of the cheapest vegetables available to the Irish immigrants.’

And finally, I have sad news to announce. While Guinness was first produced in Ireland and created by an Irish man by the name of Arthur Guinness (1725-1803), the inspiration and came from an English porter brew. And while the beer is certainly cherished as a favorite Irish past time, the creator was a committed Unionist who strongly opposed Irish nationalism. Who would have thought!

Regardless on why you celebrate, or how you celebrate…. just like with every culture in the U.S., I think that it is a great idea to get to know your neighbors and their cultural backgrounds. It just so happens that on this particular day we all get to get decent food, amazing beer, and dress up in Tutu’s and Shamrocks while running next to a dyed green river!

As always, my friends, I invite you to do more research on this subject, there were too many side tales to tell and I feel like I might have done the Irish Americans an injustice by not going more in depth. But if you even type Irish Catholics or Great Hunger into the search bar of Google.com- then I have done my job!

And please remember…...be Great and what you are Good at!