St. Patrick’s Day is America’s favorite ethnic holiday. It is also the strangest. In a calendar crowded with Cinco de Mayo, Kwanzaa, and gay pride parades, St. Paddy’s is a “minority” holiday for for the white, middle-class majority.
Many white Americans really are Irish, of course, but the reason so many white people of all ethnic backgrounds celebrate this one ethnic holiday rather than, say, Oktoberfest, goes deeper. It would be a little weird, not to say unseemly, for Americans of English or German descent to parade in the street celebrating their ethnic heritage. To do so would be like dancing in the end zone of colonial history. And so, because the Irish were actually the subjects of discrimination and oppression, Irishness has become—-unconsciously and as if by accident—-the go-to white ethnicity.
When I made this point a couple years ago, Rod Dreher pointed out that most St. Patrick’s Day revelers aren’t too concerned with the holiday’s meaning:
. . . do most Americans out getting sozzled on green beer today really have the slightest idea about what the actual Irish people suffered? I don’t think so. I think most of us have this idea of the Irish as a fun-loving people who love to drink beer, tickle leprechauns, and listen to U2. And that’s about it.
The essence of culture, and of ritual, is that it has the power to express and transmit an unselfconscious and implicit cultural memory. Any one phenomenon can have lots of meanings and social functions, and the cultural significance of St. Patrick’s Day is not circumscribed by the intentions of green-beer drinkers. You could argue that it’s self-serving for the comfortable majority to plunge into an ethnic holiday with such gusto, but I’m more inclined to admire and applaud a culture that always wants to identify with the underdog. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
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