FYM chat thread: wave if you're wearing green today!

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Not only the Catholic thing, de Valera also believed the ideal Ireland would be rural. He really turned out to be wrong there--Ireland became prosperous only after technology became advanced there.
 
Didn't see many threads similar to this on March 1, St Davids Day......

Nor did I see many people sporting dragon attired clothing, or wearing red rugby jerseys on March 1....

Nothing wrong with a little bit of celebration, but why does St Patricks Day get all the international observance while other national days are by and large ignored...
 
Well for starters, the Irish diaspora is a lot bigger than the Welsh one. Almost 15% of Americans, for example, claim Irish ancestry, while only about 0.6% claim Welsh ancestry.
 
^Probably also because Irish communities are just a bit more vocal than others....not that we are more nationalist than others, just we express it more?
 
I was wearing a lot of green yesterday - and today I probably had a greenish tint to my skin...because there is no way you can drink as much as I did and not look absolutely sick the next day!!I am only starting to feel like a part of the human race again
:hyper: :dance: :drunk: :dance: :drunk: :uhoh: :barf: :banghead:
^my day yesterday!!
 
LJT said:
^Probably also because Irish communities are just a bit more vocal than others....not that we are more nationalist than others, just we express it more?

I'm sure that is a factor. But I also think the fact Ireland is very much associated with alcohol may have a wee bit to do with why so many people celebrate St. Patrick's day so..............................
enthusiastically. :wink:

Plus, Ireland has always had this romantic edge to it that, internationally, people don't tend to have about the nations on Britain (or do they???). Which I think is a bit unfair. I mean all the nations on the British Isles have had their fair share of beautiful countryside, talented writers, strong cultural identities and their own tales of hardship...but still people tend to associate these characteristics with Ireland more so than anywhere else. (Though I confess Scotland is a very close runner-up!) :shrug: Must be something to do with that famous Irish charm! :wink:

By the way, LJT have you really dyed your hair green? And when do we see the pics of it?! :hyper:
 
The Irish community has a stronger cultural identity than the Welsh does. I'm part Welsh myself, but it's mixed up with a gazillion other nationalities (German, French, Scottish) so that it'd be inaccurate to call myself Welsh and I don't do anything Welsh any more than I celebrate Bastille Day, the French holiday, even though I also have French ancestry. This is true of most Americans who have Welsh ancestry. On the other hand, I know people who are Irish immigrants, the children of Irish immigrants, the grandchildren of Irish immigrants, and so on. These are the people who celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and there's something attractive about the celebration to Americans as a whole, non-Irish and Irish.
 
^Us Irish have a way of dragging everyone to a good party:wink:
 
^ I think that's certainly got something big to do with it...although, correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding is it's really the diaspora communities that have turned it into a green-beer-drinking, corned-beef-eating, cheesy-leprechaun-outfit-wearing, politicians-smooching-babies extravaganza, whereas I thought celebrations in Ireland itself were generally pretty low-key until recently...?
TheQuiet1 said:
Plus, Ireland has always had this romantic edge to it that, internationally, people don't tend to have about the nations on Britain (or do they???). Which I think is a bit unfair. I mean all the nations on the British Isles have had their fair share of beautiful countryside, talented writers, strong cultural identities and their own tales of hardship...but still people tend to associate these characteristics with Ireland more so than anywhere else.
Yeah, I think it's fair to say Ireland and Irishness are generally more internationally romanticized than the others, but again I think that has a lot to do with how "Irishness" has historically been developed and marketed abroad as a social, cultural and political bargaining chip of sorts (think Tammany Hall, etc.). In the US, for example, I think it's ultimately Irish-Americans who deserve the lion's share of credit for developing and fostering the appealing rags-to-riches narrative Americans in general asssociate with "Irishness" (particularly since the "riches" part didn't apply to Ireland itself until much later). And I think it's really the American version of this narrative--not anything about Ireland per se, or its writers, countryside, etc., which most Americans in truth know little about--that most Americans think of first and foremost when they think of St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

But personally, I haven't a drop of Irish blood in me, so perhaps I'm blinded by my lack of emotional self-identification with all this...:wink:
 
hey guys,

7ust a lil' curious here...

WHY THE HELL IS THERE A CHAT THREAD IN HERE? :happy:

not enough EVERYWHERE ELSE?

no?

the demise of message boards...are they all like this? what's happened?

i blame newbies.
 
yolland said:
^ I think that's certainly got something big to do with it...although, correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding is it's really the diaspora communities that have turned it into a green-beer-drinking, corned-beef-eating, cheesy-leprechaun-outfit-wearing, politicians-smooching-babies extravaganza, whereas I thought celebrations in Ireland itself were generally pretty low-key until recently...?

Yeah, I think it's fair to say Ireland and Irishness are generally more internationally romanticized than the others, but again I think that has a lot to do with how "Irishness" has historically been developed and marketed abroad as a social, cultural and political bargaining chip of sorts (think Tammany Hall, etc.). In the US, for example, I think it's ultimately Irish-Americans who deserve the lion's share of credit for developing and fostering the appealing rags-to-riches narrative Americans in general asssociate with "Irishness" (particularly since the "riches" part didn't apply to Ireland itself until much later). And I think it's really the American version of this narrative--not anything about Ireland per se, or its writers, countryside, etc., which most Americans in truth know little about--that most Americans think of first and foremost when they think of St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

But personally, I haven't a drop of Irish blood in me, so perhaps I'm blinded by my lack of emotional self-identification with all this...:wink:

True, I'm only 19 so I can't really judge how St Paddy's has been celebrated say even 50 years ago compared to now in Ireland, let alone in previous centuries. Though i do believe it has always been a cultural day as such to celebrate our music and family...as well as a break in lent:p

I also agree it is a pretty much American version of St Paddys and Irishness, that many people around the world tend to celebrate...I don't have too much of a problem with that except when people expect me to speak like I am from Dublin:wink:

The diaspora communities I think wanted to create a home from home, hence maybe why they took things to the irish stereotypical extreme...ahh i remember reading a book ages ago that lots of Irish immigrants developed mental health problems due to being out of their originally very close knit villages, towns and families....so maybe the larger celebrations of Irishness we see in the States now is just watering down(in irish cultural content) of those earlier celebrations.
 
LJT said:
...as well as a break in lent:p
:p I'm Jewish, and this reminds me of an interview I read recently with the rabbi of a Dublin synagogue...he laughingly remarked that, in those (frequent) years where Purim (a holiday where Jews are actually commanded to get plastered) falls the day before St. Paddy's, Irish Jews wind up with "the mother of all hangovers" once their two-day drinking binge has passed...
...ahh i remember reading a book ages ago that lots of Irish immigrants developed mental health problems due to being out of their originally very close knit villages, towns and families....so maybe the larger celebrations of Irishness we see in the States now is just watering down(in irish cultural content) of those earlier celebrations.
That's a really good point, and I bet it applies to a lot of other immigrant groups from countries with more close-knit social structures, who get the reputation of "sticking together" once they move here. I can see where there might be some collective mental health benefits to indulging in that for awhile, before you go plunging into full-throttle American individualism...
 
An Irish Jew...that would be an interesting personality complex :hmm:

I know a lot of the St Patricks Day stuff is very Americanized and stereotypical, but it tends to be very positive. (Americans in general tend to think anything Irish is da coolest eva!!) So it's all good...

I know what you're saying about tight-knit communities. I know people whose ancestors all got here between 1840 and 1860 and can claim to be 100% Irish. I think Jewish people have tended to stick together as well, to some extent. Where my dad grew up, most people were the children or grandchildren of Russian Jews and proud of it. But when actual Russian Jews started arriving and going to their schools (this was the 70s), they were seen as strange and foreign. :wink:
 
VertigoGal said:
But when actual Russian Jews started arriving and going to their schools (this was the 70s), they were seen as strange and foreign.
When we moved to Brooklyn in the mid-80s, I know I sure thought they were strange and foreign! :wink: Of course, they in turn saw me as a sadly bastardized, Southern redneck freak, so it kind of all evened out...

You want to go back to discussing green beer, snowbunny? :wink:
 
It's only one chat thread, I doubt they will become a regular occurrence-I hope not. This forum is my refuge from chat threads and honestly from the rest of Int where people tend to interact w/ you only if you're part of their "group" .Anyway here are the answers for the Irish quiz

1. 18
2. False: Englishman Frederic Edward Weatherly wrote the tune.
3. Maewyn Succat
4. Great Britain
5. George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney
6. The Blarney Stone in Dorchester
7. False: Singer/songwriter John Redmond wrote the Christmas carol in Clinton, Mass.
8. True: Approximately 5 million people visit Ireland every year. The population is approximately 3.8 million.
9. Paul Hewson
10. York
11. Potatoes.
12. The Charitable Irish Society of Boston in 1737. The first parade was held in New York City in 1762 according to Historychannel.com.
13. Maine
14. A shamrock has three leafs, the clover has four.
15. False: “Corned beef and cabbage is not really an Irish meal, as many people think, but an Irish-American dish that was popular in the 19th century. The Irish themselves prefer to eat salmon, lamb and locally grown products. The potato is still a staple of the Irish diet,” said Michael Quinlan, author of “Irish Boston: A Lively Look at Boston’s Colorful Irish Past.”
16. False: Sir Walter Raleigh is believed to have first brought the vegetable from America to Ireland in the late 1500s.
17. Trick question. According to Guinness Brewmaster Fergal Murray, Guinness first started brewing in 1759, but it wasn’t until the brewer’s bicentennial in 1959 that the special hydrogenated process allowed for the beer we commonly know as Guinness Draught.
 
yolland said:

:p I'm Jewish, and this reminds me of an interview I read recently with the rabbi of a Dublin synagogue...he laughingly remarked that, in those (frequent) years where Purim (a holiday where Jews are actually commanded to get plastered) falls the day before St. Paddy's, Irish Jews wind up with "the mother of all hangovers" once their two-day drinking binge has passed...

Wikipedia has a fairly good summarised history:--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Ireland

'Little Jerusalem' is one of my favourite areas of Dublin.
 
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