Irish Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you and all the retailers who sell the holiday. This year St. Patrick's Day (always on march 17th) will set records for Irish item sales. Because St. Patrick's Day falls on a Saturday this year it will be huge for retailers. According to the National Retailers Confederation, consumers expect to spend about $35 each, for a total of $4.6 billion this year on the holiday. That is an increase of 11% from 2011. And that confederation says the majority of the money spent will be on green items that signify Ireland and can help the individual avoid being pinched for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day.

There's quite a few ways to celebrate St. Patrick's day. For the wild and crazy crowd there are Irish bar hops imbibing green beer and other alcohol until the celebration ends in green vomit. There are the traditional Irish parades, decorating the house or office in Irish fashion, the simple "wearing of the green clothes or accessories", attending a private party, a night out at a bar or restaurant or the traditional home cooked Irish day meal of corned beef, cabbage, rum raisin rice pudding and Irish soda bread. My mother used to cook that one and I ate baloney instead of cabbage instead. I absolutely despise corned beef. Rumor has it the reason I am "full of baloney" most of the time is because I never eat corned beef.

St. Patrick's Day is a "fun" holiday because the Irish people and culture have so much fun in life. I always loved the parades in New Orleans in honor of St. Patrick's day. They are Mardi Gras style parades with floats that toss things to the crowds, filled with bands that play Irish music instead of Mardi Gras or Jazz tunes and have the same kind of outlandish marching groups found in Mardi Gras parades. The mostly inebriated marches wear crazy green outfits, carry flowers on long poles and hand them out in exchange for a kiss.

Fortunately, the only marchers who kissed me were the women, but I figure even a woman would have to be drunk to want to trade a flower for one of my kiss. Every time I attended one of those New Orleans St. Patrick's Day parades I returned home with huge garbage bags filled with cabbages, onions, potatoes, and carrots that were tossed by the float riders to give us the ingredients to make an Irish stew (no, lamb tossed from a float won't work, I had to buy that).

Ironically, apart from in Dublin, Ireland, which has a 5 day festival that features a parade, family carnivals, treasure hunt, dance, theater to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, most of Ireland doesn't give the holiday a whole lot of attention. Mostly, in Ireland itself there is a subdued acknowledgment of the day. People traditionally wear a small bunch of shamrocks on their jackets or caps. Children wear orange, white and green badges, and women and girls wear green ribbons in their hair. That's it. The Irish immigrants to the United States made it bigger there than it is in Ireland. There are about 40 times the number of people with Irish heritage living in the United states that there are Irish in the country of Ireland itself.

Most clovers have only three leaves on them the first is for hope, the second for faith, the third for love. But those 4 leaf clovers add one for luck. May all your clovers be 4 leafed and may your beer be green this St. Patrick's Day.