Spring Holidays

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March and April, despite having their holidays, tend to be months of pretty solid capitalistic work.  Congress may take its April recess and universities have their spring break, but the working stiffs just keep going.  I’ve worked for a couple of British companies and they have a dilemma in the Human Resources department.  Britain has a lot more days off per year than American business practice does.  The dilemma?  How to tell your colonials that the head offices will be closed around Easter when those of the New World will remain open.  You see, very few American companies recognize what some Christians call Holy Week as a time for anything other than work.  Back in the days when I was still trying to work myself into the Episcopal priesthood, I had to ask my manager for Good Friday off and permission was only reluctantly given.

The two major Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter are vastly different in their public expression.  Despite the outlook of Scrooge, most companies consider Christmas a holiday, even to the point of giving you a Friday or Monday off if it falls on a weekend.  A present, as it were.  Easter, on the other hand, reliably falls on a Sunday.  Viewed in isolation there’s no need to give people any days off.  Since I was a teen, however, I took Maundy Thursday and Good Friday seriously.  You were, even in the Methodist church, encouraged to spend the latter in church, especially around the middle of the day.  If at all possible, it should be raining.  It wasn’t a day off for rest and relaxation, but for contemplating sin and its costs (hardly conducive to capitalism).

Universities, however, have tended to shift spring break to St. Patrick’s Day so as to get the damage of drunken students off campus.  Indeed, Purim, the Jewish spring holiday, also advocates drinking until Haman and Mordecai become indistinguishable when spoken.  Sort of like Hamilton, it was the holiday that saved the book of Esther, just like the Broadway show preserved the ten-dollar bill.  When it comes to business, however, Americans are all business.  (Did someone  mention a ten-dollar bill?!)  Money, as MC reminds us, makes the vorld go round.  And holidays are viewed as constant interruptions.  The typical work calendar will have no holidays from President’s Day in February until Memorial Day at the end of May.  It’s typically the longest stretch without a paid holiday.  Just when the weather’s starting to get nicer.  But let’s not forget, money is fully in charge here, for where your treasure is, there your heart shall be also.

Green Dilemma

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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

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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.

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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.

Wee People

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Whence we come influences our outlook. Sometimes invisibly, at other time quite consciously. I remember as a child, wanting to be honest about the wearing of the green on St Patrick’s Day, asking whether we were Irish or not. Of course, for many Americans being Irish, German, or Swedish really means having ancestors long ago from a different country. Most of my ancestors had been in America for some time—a couple hundred years at least. In New Jersey, where many people are literally from elsewhere, that can seem exotic. Great-great-grandparents in one of my lines can be traced to another country, but most of my ancestry is already settled in the United States long before that. Unknown to my mother at the time of that question, one of my ancestors was indeed from Ireland, a stowaway, as I understand it, and thus I could wear green without being dishonest. (Children can be so parsimonious.) When I saw the locals walking away from yesterday’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in my local town it was obvious that not all of them were Irish (or American with an Irish ancestor), but they nevertheless came out on a cheerless, chilly day to join in the Celtic spirit of celebration. St Patrick’s Day is all about belonging.

Photo credit: Andreas F. Borchert, Wikicommons

Photo credit: Andreas F. Borchert, Wikicommons

The rich mythology of Ireland was never supplanted completely by the Catholic influence that became synonymous with many parts of the country. Leprechauns, the little people with their pots of gold, have been fused into a mythology of St Patrick and his magical clover that somehow explained the Trinity, while it is the four-leaved variety that brings good luck. And Ireland’s snake-free evolution was attributed to sacred innovation rather than the Ice Age, the true culprit. It is our myths who make us who we are, however. Where would Ireland be with a massive chunk of ice preventing snakes from evolving in a land where a genetic variation sometimes leads to a fourth leaf on a common grass of the field? And where is that pot of gold anyway?

And yet, within the last year construction on a highway was halted in Iceland (I know I’ve island-hopped here, despite the difference of a single consonant) because locals protested that it would disturb the habitat of the little people. While a post-graduate representative to the Faculty of Divinity in Edinburgh (switching islands yet again), one of the faculty admitted to a fascination with Celtic folklore. A more rational theologian challenged him saying, “what about the farmer who loses valuable space in his field because he leaves a ‘magical’ tree standing—isn’t that tragic?” The renegade faculty member allowed that this too was especially wonderful. A world enchanted is swiftly disappearing beneath the unrelenting tires and blades of scraper and cold planer, or the axe-bearing lord of ultimate efficiency. The soul is just another casualty on the road to enlightenment. And yet yesterday, those with ancestry from Africa, India, China, Italy, and even England, gathered to watch the parade where the mythology of an island that never had an empire nevertheless draws together people of all ancestries to wear a bit of green and to celebrate whence we came. St Patrick’s is a day to celebrate whoever we are. And to leave the door ajar for the wee folk that might still be around.