St. Patrick’s Day will be here in one week. In America, it's nearly a national holiday right up there with um, Halloween. The notion of dressing up in kelly green clothes to march down the road on the way to drinking way too much green beer, and turning our rivers green is truly an American way of recognizing the saint who, ironically, wasn’t even Irish. St. Patrick was actually born in Britain but was taken to Ireland as a captive slave in his teens. He later returned there as a bishop.
According to the National Geographic, St. Patrick’s Day was considered a minor holiday in Ireland for most of the last century until the 1970s. Our love of green beer has since worn off on those who used to mark the day in a low key way.
Even the food we celebrate with - corned beef - is an American notion. While the history of corning, or pickling, meat dates back to the 18th century, it was mostly to accommodate the long-term storage of meat on trans-Atlantic trade routes, particularly on slave-trading routes. As a result, it was looked down upon as food only fit for slaves and the impoverished.
The growth of St. Patrick’s Day in America changed all that. We can thank the early Irish immigrants who wanted a day to remember their homeland. They may not eat it in Ireland but here in the US, we consider corned beef to be the national food of March 17th. The sales start up in the supermarket the week prior and for just a few dollars, you can buy a chunk of industrial cured beef and throw it in a pot of simmering water for several hours and pretend to be Irish, if only for a day.
