With discount DNA tests all the rage online these days, I recently took a 23 and Me and, jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, found out that my grandmother was an Irish princess!
I’m kidding, for the most part. My grandmother, on my father’s side, was nothing more than the dirt-poor daughter of Irish immigrants who came to this country with empty pockets and, thankfully for me, she eventually wedded a full-blooded Choctaw living in Indian Territory, my grandfather. So yakoke and go raibh maith agat, Grandma Ethel.
Probably because she died in 1948, our Irish lineage has never been something that my family has really ever celebrated, the memories and traditions lost to times long forgotten. That being said, the one holiday that has always fascinated and perplexed me—now more than ever—has always been Lá Fhéile Pádraig or, as it’s better known by, St. Patrick’s Day.
While I get it—celebrating the patron saint who drove the “snakes” (read: pagans) out of Ireland—I never completely understood how getting absolutely fluthered on the black stuff and picking a fight with your landlord honors this heathen-hating holy man. But, then again, as I think deeper about it, I realized I never participated in it and its festivities before either.