Green Dilemma

1 Comment March 17, 2020 Steve Wiggins

It’s a dilemma. I face it every year. I don’t have green to wear and it’s St. Patrick’s Day. For your average run-of-the-mill citizen, this might not be an issue—but I do have an Irish heritage (in part), and so it’s a heartfelt concern. The reason I don’t have green has less to do with fashion (consider the source!) than with my clothing purchasing practices. First of all, I like to make my clothes last. Fabrics can be quite durable. They aren’t mechanical and therefore don’t break down often. I don’t live a rough-and-tumble life, so tears aren’t really a problem. The end result is that I keep my clothes as long as they’re functional. When they begin to wear out I go to the store and examine the clearance racks until I find something in my size. That means color selection is often a matter of very limited options.

Once in a great while I have landed something green. I still remember a green shirt I had in college. It served me well for more than four St. Patrick’s Days. It long ago succumbed to overuse, however, because I wore it on other days as well. And let’s face it, when I make one of those infrequent trips to the clothiers’ shops, this particular holiday’s not on my mind. Unless, of course, I go shopping in March. Back when I lived in Boston it was easy to get your Irish on. I bought a bright green silky (I don’t know if it was real silk) tie with white shamrocks on it. It was probably down at Faneuil Hall. It had been a bit outlandish to wear to work in New York City, though. Indeed, at work staid dress was by far the most common code. Consequently it hung unused in my closet for years.

When we moved a couple summers back, I noticed my green tie had faded to bronze. I thought it went the other way around. In any case, my last truly green clothing article was no longer green. Yes, it still has shamrocks, but I’d feel even more ridiculous trying to rock a bronze tie and pass myself off as Irish. It won’t even pass for gold. Of course, I work from home. I’ve practiced social distancing long before it was a trend or a government mandate, whichever it is. The only people to see my lack of green would be my wife and daughter, and perhaps a Jehovah’s Witnesses that might stop by. But still, even minor celebrations are anticipated at times such as this. Although I won’t be going out today I’ll probably be spending some time in my closet and reflecting on the true heritage of my Irish forebears.

Perhaps St. Pat shops like I do?

St. Pat Tricks

Leave a comment March 17, 2016 Steve Wiggins

What does it say about a saint when the celebration of his day is excessive drinking? Virtue and vice, while not nearly as Manichean as sometimes made out to be, nevertheless conflict in such a setting. Like many American mutts, I have some Irish heritage. I wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, as it’s the done thing. I avoid any celebrations, however. When my job calls for travel to college campuses, I know to avoid the time around St. Patrick’s. Indeed, I’ve taught on campuses where Spring Break was always scheduled around St. Pat’s so as to minimize property damage on campus. Send them off to Florida, where they can be some other electorate’s problem.

This is an interesting dichotomy. We live in a fairly permissive culture, at least when it comes to things like sex and violence. We nevertheless have built a Prohibition-Era-like mystique around alcohol consumption that makes our college-aged kids a little too curious. Binge drinking and its predictable aftermath have become far too common. Put them together with an Irish saint and all bets are off.

Historically, the Irish have been maligned in what is an acceptable way. Few complain when a nationality is non-ethnic on the surface but non-welcome nevertheless. The Irish have been historically oppressed, but today we forget all that. We hold parades with bagpipes to bolster solidarity, but only if the taps are freely flowing. Drinking with holidays is nothing new. Even Judaism has its Purim and other religions may, from time to time, relax strict rules on the evils of alcohol. But what does it say about a saint that there is apparently no other way to celebrate his day? Wearing green, yes, but that may be entirely accidental. It is, after all, a Dionysian rite of spring, our apparel matching the verdure we soon anticipate as winter wends its weary way out. Even so, I’m glad not to have to be on the streets of a major city when the parade marches by. Even with my Irish ancestry, I prefer to celebrate in my own quiet way, just by wearing green.

Saints and Snakes

1 Comment March 17, 2012 Steve Wiggins

I am not now, nor have I ever been, Catholic. So why am I wearing green today? It could be that a drop or two of Irish blood courses through my veins from a stow-away great-great-grandmother, or the assurance that, as an American mutt some Irish must have gotten in somehow. Or maybe it is more than that. From my youngest days, even before I knew of my family history (and nobody had bothered to inquire), I still wore green on Saint Patrick’s Day. Getting off the bus at school and seeing so many people with otherwise so little in common coming together to wear shades of green on the same day was somehow inspiring and made me feel like part of something larger than myself. It was a day of fun, and decidely not one of doctrine or repressive decrees about women or homosexuals or even Protestants. It was a day of unity.

Can a day based on church mythology ever long remain a day of peaceful inclusion of others? In college I met militant Protestants who insisted that orange be worn on Saint Patrick’s Day to stand in solidarity with the Protestant minority. I heard news reports of gays being excluded from otherwise festive Saint Patrick’s Day parades in major cities. Maybe the snakes driven out of Ireland have lodged themselves in the souls of those who plant divisiveness—but it occurs to me that I’m being unfair to the snakes.

In a tiny time capsule of twenty-four hours, Saint Patrick’s Day is a miniature paradigm of the ambivalence that we call religion. At its best it draws people of all backgrounds together for a celebration as large as life itself. At the same time, it is the ultimate in exclusion—the statement that we are special in a way you are not. Green, the color of Ireland, is an apt symbol for the day. In the planet world, the large swaths of earth seen from high above, green is the color of life. Each spring the shooting forth of green is eagerly awaited as the plant kingdom reveals to us that a refreshing change is in the air. Among many animal species, however, green stands for illness, and perhaps impending death. So here I am wearing green—not Catholic, not plant, not wishing to make unequal divisions. It is just like a religious holiday to celebrate ambiguity.