Considering it glorifies more cultural stereotypes than any other day on the calendar, you’d think I’d despise St. Patrick’s Day.
Not that I don’t have my hangups about its schlockiness. I hate the T-shirts, and I get dizzy from constantly rolling my eyes at the sparkly green excess and shamrock-bespeckled – well – everything. The incessant requests to play “Danny Boy” get pretty old, too.
Casey PhillipsYet I can’t help but love St. Patrick’s Day because it’s the one day when people pay attention to a heritage that is woven into our region yet ignored, by and large, during the rest of the year.
Come tomorrow, most people won’t think twice about Ireland or Irish culture, which is baffling, because Irish roots in the South are bedrock-deep and much older than in many other parts of the country.
Most people probably think Irish American history begins with the mass influx into major Northeastern cities caused by the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, yet many Southerners’ claim to Irishness dates much further back. Most Irish arrived in the South in the 1700s during an immigration from Ulster, a region mostly comprising what is now Northern Ireland. Many were Protestants who came to Ireland from the Scottish Lowlands in the 1600s.
These “Scots-Irish” – some prefer “Scotch-Irish” – sailed to America fleeing drought and excessive rents levied on their land. Many initially settled in Pennsylvania, but by the end of the century, they had occupied much of the Appalachian frontier.
And they’re still here, or at least their descendants are.
According to Grey House Publishing’s book “Ancestry & Ethnicity in America,” more than 3 percent of Alabamians, Georgians, North Carolinians and Tennesseans claim Scots-Irish ancestry. That may not seem like much, but it’s a higher percentage than almost any other state listed in the book. Incidentally, that ancestry is self-reported, so many Southerners acknowledge familial ties to Ireland, however far removed.
To sum up, we’re a region that prides itself on family and tradition, and many of us claim Irish ancestry, yet we only celebrate that heritage for a single day by binge drinking and dancing fake jigs with costumed leprechauns under garlands of paper shamrocks.
Huh.
So as much as I despise “Danny Boy,” frustratingly shower-resistant emerald glitter and the abuse of green food dye, I’m obliged to love St. Patrick’s Day. After all, dancing by yourself – even a fake jig – is just plain sad. Today at least, there’ll be other people on the floor with me.
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.