The Wearing of the Green

I have come to loathe this country's celebration of St Patrick's Day, and over the years I've developed a litany of complaints which I'm quite pleased with: it is celebrated by drinking to excess; it is about wearing green; it contributes to a simplistic view of Irishness as having to do with leprechauns and shamrocks; it thereby disrepects a formidable saint and trivializes an ethnic heritage. Needless to say, I have answered all who ask, I do not wear green on this day. I don't fookin' need to. My dad is an Irish citizen. That's plenty.

But today, something I have known for a long time bubbled up out of memory, and wearing green suddenly seemed to be all right. Possibly even a good thing.

Pretend, for a moment, that you are oppressed. That you are denied an education; that you cannot practice your religion; that you are systematically, legally, abused. You cannot vote. You cannot enter a profession, or engage in trade of any sort. Your priests are hunted for sport. You are Irish under the penal laws: a non-person.

In response to this, the moral backbone of a country is broken: morality is an unaffordable luxury; lying and conniving flourish; vigilantism against collaborators is the norm. Poverty, of course, is endemic.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspects of this very non-funny time: capital punishment for wearing the color green. Because green stands for Ireland.

Then, the famine. A million Irish perish; and those who are able to emigrate in great floods, often under unthinkable conditions. Read about the coffin ships and you'll understand why so few Irish Americans know where in Ireland they actually came from.

Famine Monument - Dublin City - Ireland
Originally uploaded by lpinseel.

When you come over in a half-human state, and throw yourself into the work of living in a new land, details get lost. What is remembered, mostly unconsciously, is this oppression. That wearing green means something, even if we don't remember what. That we are here, dammit; that we are alive still; that something lost needs remembering.

So: to the fat guy in the green T-shirt, and the little black girl with the green hair ribbons: thank you for honoring this past, however unknowingly. May brutality never harm your spirit; May you proclaim your truth to the world, never apologize for what you are, and ever thumb your nose at oppression. Wear green. Don't allow any government to deny you your humanity. And please, find some mode of self-expression other than drinking excessively, regardless of whatever St Brigid may have told you.

I'm a bit embarrassed it took me this long to put together what wearing green means. Although I suspect 99 of 100 Irish-Americans would be clueless as well.

For an exhaustive school curriculum detailing the Famine and penal laws, click here.
For an overview of Celtic Christianity, including Patrick's Prayer, click here.

For the shameless tearjerker of a song that came into my head this morning, read on.

O Paddy dear, an' did ye hear the news that's goin' round?
The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground;
St. Patrick's Day no more we'll keep, his colour can't be seen,
For there's a cruel law agin the wearin' o' the Green.

I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand,
And he said, "How's poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?"
She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
For they're hangin' men an' women there for the wearin' o' the Green.

Then since the colour we must wear is England's cruel red,
Sure Ireland's sons will ne'er forget the blood that they have shed,
You may take a shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod,
It will take root and flourish there though underfoot it's trod.

When law can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow,
And when the leaves in summer-time their colour dare not show,
Then will I change the colour, too, I wear in my caubeen
But 'till that day, please God, I'll stick to wearin' o' the Green.

But if at last our colour should be torn from Ireland's heart,
Her sons with shame and sorrow from the dear old isle will part;
I've heard a whisper of a land that lies beyond the sea
Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of freedom's day.

O Erin, must we leave you driven by a tyrant's hand?
Must we ask a mother's blessing from a strange and distant land?
Where the cruel cross of England shall nevermore be seen,
And where, please God, we'll live and die still wearin' o' the green!