St. Patrick’s Day was a *nothing* holiday in Ireland. It only became popular among Irish immigrants as a celebration of their own culture. When the Irish arrived, they were hated and vilified. They did years of work in horrid conditions and were barred from many better jobs.

And now… “everyone” wants to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. The celebration of St. Patrick’s day is a testament to the way the Irish overcame harsh discrimination while maintaining a connection to their culture. I think *that* is worth celebrating, even if St. Patrick himself is not.

I meant to say that the Brits forced the Irish off MOST of the good land for grazing. I was actually commenting on their lack of ingenuity or creativity. Not sure how tight security was back then, but something tells me they could have snagged a sheep or two at night. What about the fact that they are on an island and surround by some great fishing. Yes I understand that Britain set tariffs and restricted other crops from being grown, but I thought we were dealing with tough guys here.

Chances are, this is all tongue-in-cheek stuff, but JUST in case it’s not:

No amount of fishing (given the available fishing fleet), stealing, or raising other crops would have made up for the loss of caloric content in the potato. Only importing food would have saved lives, and the British forbade that. In fact, the Brits exported cattle from Ireland during the famine.

There was, in fact, both stealing and poaching going on, but British laws were so strict that the penalty was often death.

Just in case you weren’t joking about a human catastrophe.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=z7WmXP_Sj20&feature=related

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yY_s6izJYTM

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UVRfcIpXHw0&feature=related

Shepherds Pie is good, honest fayre when cooked properly…

http://thefoody.com/meat/shepherds.html

Irish Dancing is gorgeous. But you either love it or hate it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_dance

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=W22gpBv00gg

I meant to say that the Brits forced the Irish off MOST of the good land for grazing. I was actually commenting on their lack of ingenuity or creativity. Not sure how tight security was back then, but something tells me they could have snagged a sheep or two at night. What about the fact that they are on an island and surround by some great fishing. Yes I understand that Britain set tariffs and restricted other crops from being grown, but I thought we were dealing with tough guys here.

in Ireland, a population that in 250 years had grown from one million to more than eight million, solely because of the potato’s unrivaled quality as a staple food, was threatened with starvation.

And I, for one, love corned beef and cabbage. I can’t stand shepherd’s pie, though.

Not that I can really argue about the standing-outside-freezing-for-the-parade part…

Shitty Food:
I’d rather eat dog shit then Sheppard’s pie or corn beef and cabbage.

Ginger people:
Red hair, pale skin, enough said.

The inability to adapt when one vegetable won’t grow:
I know it’s way cooler to be a bar fighting, beer drinking, Mic, but if you’re so tough how come you couldn’t steal some meat from the Brits. Your land has unbelievably fertile and was home to tons of live stock, yet millions got up and left because they couldn’t grow a potato.

Every song sounds the same after 2 minutes:
I love Celtic music in moderation, yet after 4 songs it gets so tiresome. The beat is always the same and after a while you start thinking “this song is in every movie” yet it’s not, it just sounds like every Celtic song in every movie where there’s a hint of Irish.

Your nation’s symbol is a weed that no one wants in their yard:
Having spent several seasons as a landscaper fighting this weed I understand how tough it is to get rid of. Maybe the reason it’s your national symbol is because it’s so tough, nope, it’s symbolic of how St Patrick taught the holy trinity. Too bad.

Irish Dancing:
I dated a chick who taught Irish Dancing and I always thought it was one of those things that was way harder than it looked, I was wrong. She said it was incredibly easy, and there was basically only a few steps. So I was right when I assumed it was the same shit over and over again. Yes it takes some skill and agility, but so does beer pong.

I go through this every year, and come July in Buffalo when they have the Italian fest I will get fed up with all the ball grabbin, too much gel in the hair, wise guys who, you guessed it, know someone who knows someone in the Mafia.

Next up on the list is Dyngus day.

http://www.dyngusdaybuffalo.com/

Actually, I was talking about accounts from pre-Christian Rome, not Church accounts.

Hey, like I said, you’ll not find me defending the Church. I think monotheism, in general, has been one of the history’s greatest curses. But, really, the druids weren’t nice people. And one of the Roman writers (it may have been GJ Caesar) says that they routinely sacrificed prisoners and/or tortured them to death.

Were the Celts no different from “a number of other ancient cultures”? I suppose that, by definition, that would be true, since “a number” can be any number. But I would submit, very strongly, that human sacrifice was rare in most ancient cultures after the early Bronze Age, and that the vast majority of those cultures found the practice repugnant.

I’m not disputing that the Church visited all sorts of horrors on the world. I just think that doing away with the druids wasn’t all that bad.

The issue, of course, is that primitive people are primitive people, and replacing one butcher with another is hardly the sort of thing we should get too sentimental about. And gory details notwithstanding, I always tend toward skepticism when we start celebrating evangelism in any of its forms.

I take a backseat to no one when deploring the ravages of Christianity or, for that matter, monotheism. Having said that, I don’t really think the druids are a good example.

If the Romans can be believed (and I think they can in this case), the druids practiced human sacrifice. Druidism was one of the few religions the Romans went after with the intent to wipe it out. Christianity was attacked, on occasion, because of Christian’s refusal to at least acknowledge the state religion, but the druids were wiped out in France and Britain because of their extreme brutality. (In fact, it’s the Roman abhorence to human sacrifice that make the slaughter of the infants in Matthew highly, highly suspect.)

The Irish paid a dear price through much of history for embracing the Church. But losing the druids was, in my opinion, one of the things which, on balance, was a good thing.

A few St. Patrick’s Day links: The wiki treatment White People like it! A little Irish-ish music (along with a story that make you go “awww”!) wearing oÂ’ the black St. Patrick’s Day won’t occur during Holy Week again until……

I won’t be wearing green today. Don’t get me wrong – like many Americans, I’ve got plenty of Irish blood in my veins, and I’m quite happy to celebrate that heritage. But this St. Patrick thing……