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Kiss Me, I’m Irish! Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th

I never heard (sadly?) that slogan while growing up Irish just north of Boston some years ago, though years later I remember seeing it on buttons people wore around St. Patrick’s day. We celebrated rather quietly in my family, my brothers and sisters and I wearing some green to school and my mother preparing a “boiled dinner.” This meant corned beef boiled with potatoes, cabbage, carrots and turnips. I loved the saltiness of the beef, but the greasy cabbage not so much.

Also, around this holiday, my mother would bake Irish bread made with buttermilk which made it moist and baking soda which made it rise and left a faint metallic taste. It also had raisins to sweeten it and thin seeds, caraway seeds, that had a strong piquant taste. I sometimes picked these out.

So that’s how we celebrated in my family, nothing exceptional, mostly commemorating the day by eating Irish food. As I grew older, I heard about a big parade in a very Irish neighborhood of Boston, and that many Irish Americans and their friends used the day as an excuse to drink a lot. Either way, quiet or noisy, though the day was meant to honor St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, I believe that now and then Irish-Americans celebrate this day to remember where their parents and grandparents came from—the Old Sod, the Emerald Isle, Ireland! As the saying goes, we’re all Irish on March 17th.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back . . .
And, until we meet again, may God hold you
in the palm of his hand.
An Irish blessing

By Genevieve Ferrick