Tuesday, March 18, 2008

St. Patrick's Day

Thanks to Emily's interest, we had a lovely St. Patrick's Day meal yesterday evening, complete with sausages and gravy, steamed cabbage, carrots and potatoes, and Irish Soda Bread to finish off.

When we were in the UK, we never did anything about St. Patrick's Day. Living in a Protestant town, on a mostly Protestant street, one would just never "celebrate" a "Catholic" holiday, or risk wearing green so boldly. It could be hard to explain to a neighbor why you went to a Protestant church and yet celebrated St. Patrick's Day.

However, in the States, it is basically just a day to wear a green shirt and eat Irish food -- it really has NO religious connotations, unless you deliberately make them.

So, we are back to wearing green shirts on St. Patrick's Day, and eating Irish food if we feel up to cooking it. And, it's a good chance to teach the children a bit of church history by telling them who the real St. Patrick was -- a missionary to Ireland in the 5th century.

We all really enjoyed our dinner!

2 comments:

SueJ said...

Why not!The only way I was aware of it was through the shamrocks on 'Google'!

Catherine said...

That's interesting about the difference between celebrating the day here versus in the UK. I wouldn't have thought of that, but it makes sense.