Quiet celebration of St. Patrick’s Day in Florida
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, St. Patrick’s Day in Florida was a quiet one for the year of 2021. The massive parade in Naples was canceled, for the second year in a row. Indoor dining restrictions squelched many smaller gatherings that are usually held on March 17.
It did give me pause, however, to think and remember what this day is all about. Although I was raised with all of the green beer and plastic-hat hoopla that characterize the mid-March celebrations of the “High Holy Days of Erin” in Buffalo, New York, I never got a real feel for “Eire” and all of her colorful traditions. American tunes like “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” and “McNamara’s Band” didn’t really do it for me either.
But, older memories crept in as I mused about our traditions over a quiet meal and a thankful libation. I could remember groups of elementary students singing “Galway Bay” for an appreciative audience at St. John The Evangelist School. And the soft murmuring as we listened to “Tu Ra Loo Ra Loo Ra" was comforting to us, as we imagined a mother sing to her child. Later, with The Troubles, we sang lustily “The Rising of the Moon,” “The Patriot’s Game” and the “Wild Colonial Boy.” The emotions that these ballads released seem to ring more of ancient Eire and her struggles, than the Irish American Broadway tunes of the late Nineteenth Century. There is a place for both, when struggling for ethnic identity. Most of us are much more “American” than we realize. Green beer and plastic hats are an attempt to refocus our memories on who we are and from whence we had come.
My own, like most immigrants of their day, were poor and landless, struggling for survival in the harsh and sometimes hostile environment of Nineteenth Century America. And they remembered an even harsher existence in Eire, where their own had starved to death under an even more hostile environment. The stories were all passed down to us around campfires, as they had been given to our own for thousands of years. “Cu Chulain,” “Brian Boru,“ “Nial of the Nine Hostages” were not ancient memories for us, but cultural markers that explained who we are.
Through all of these inequities, the Irish propensity for “black humor” survived. As a people, we could look at our considerable troubles and still come up with a ribald joke, or sing a lilting ballad, that raised the spirits and lessened the gloom around us. It is this quality that I most admire and remember about our own on St. Patrick’s Day. These kind people didn’t have pennies to rub together, yet they instilled in their children a love of learning and laughter that carried us all through the hard times. True, the creature took her toll on many of us. “The Drink” was an Irish curse as far back as any of us can remember.
But, literature, music and dance always accompanied any celebration of our heritage. The Irish had more than the gift of gab to sustain them. They had lyrical souls that could create mystical ballads and sing haunting songs of their long-gone ancestors. They also had the grit and the stoicism to look adversity in the face, spit in its eye and continue on. Our own carried on these traditions when they came over to America during the “Hunger” of the 1840s. Luckily for us, the Catholic Church was our protector and helped shepherd us into the mainstream of American society.
It is these thoughts that I had on this quiet St. Patrick’s Day of 2021. And, as usual, I came again to admire our own that had come before us. They gave us the gift of humor in adversity, and the iron will of the stubborn Irish to succeed, no matter who stood in our way. God bless them everyone.
And as always, when I utter the phrase “Erin Go Bragh,” I follow it quickly and more passionately with a thankful “God Bless America.”
Joseph Xavier Martin is a resident of Estero.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Quiet celebration of St. Patrick’s Day in Florida
