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| Parade in Albany NY by Sébastien Barré (Flickr) |
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Happy St. Patrick’s Day, the day when famously everyone in the US becomes Irish for 24 hours. I hope you all have something green on, and that the corned beef and cabbage is ready in the instapot!
Of course, in reality, the American celebration doesn’t have a lot in common with the actual day in Éire, where it’s traditionally been a combination religious festival and bank holiday. Yes, it’s true: the actual citizens of Ireland did not invent the Shamrock Shake, green beer, or the Sexy Leprechaun costume. Shocking, I know. That corned beef and cabbage? American. They don’t even dye their rivers green, for goodness sake.
My theory is when you combine a large immigrant population in the United States with a holiday that offers the opportunity for 1) booze, 2) food and 3) a huge American-style blow-out, it’s going to take off in popularity. Cinco de Mayo has become very popular in the past decade or so, and I’m waiting for Chinese New Year to take off in a big way, because we need a festival in late January/early February and I, for one, love Chinese food and beer. Oktoberfest has become so prevalent in the US that we’ve stopped spelling it the German way.
There are immigrant groups that just haven’t been able to bring it across. Sometimes, it’s the timing: the Scots’ Hogmanay takes place on New Years Eve, and there doesn’t seem to be a strong impetus to add haggis to the champagne-and-ball-dropping festivities. Muslims have the most amazing food for Eid celebrations (seriously, if you get an 
invite, go) but alas for American sensibilities, there’s no alcohol involved. I think Holi could be a great fit in the US - who doesn’t like eating Indian food and going wild with colored powder and water? It looks like so much fun! Unfortunately, the lunar date always puts it in March, and there aren’t many places in the continental US where the weather is right for dressing in light garments and getting color-bombed.
Reds, what holidays would you like to see added to the American calendar? And how are you celebrating St. Paddy’s Day?
RHYS BOWEN: a few years ago my publisher with misguided enthusiasm sent me to New York on St. Patrick’s Day. It turned out that nobody was going to come to a book event on St. Patrick’s Day, because the streets were full of drunken revelers. Lesson learned.
I’m always annoyed that there is no specific English festival that we celebrate. Also, the English have no national costume and no real national dances apart from morris dancing which is incredibly silly, so how about St. George’s Day when we could get together around a May pole and eat bangers and mash, a cream tea, maybe toss a few pancakes or just go down the nearest pub.
Hank Phillippi Ryan: I am still annoyed by losing my hour of sleep. I think we should have national sleep day! When everybody gets to have anything celebratory they want, say, mullled wine, or hot milk, or tea with brandy, or like, anything, hot chocolate let’s say, and then they get to take a nap. A big nap! And everybody gets to get back their hour of sleep. Yes, this is kind of brilliant. I want “national get back your lost hour of sleep day.” Who’s in?
JULIA: I think we can all get behind that holiday, Hank.
JENN McKINLAY: I love St. Patrick’s Day! I love it when NPR reports live from Dublin and they interview the revelers. Hilarious. And I have so 
many fond memories of going to the parade in New Haven with my college friends and, yes, drinking green beer. So ridiculous! It’s not that big of an event in Phoenix. We do Cinco de Mayo pretty well in the SW. Chinese New Year has long been celebrated in my house because I’m never ready for the calendar New Year and prefer to start my resolutions, etc. on the Chinese New Year plus there’s egg rolls. My pick for a new holiday would be Jolabokaflod (Christmas book flood). The Icelandic tradition started in 1944 and basically books are given on Dec 24th and everyone spends the day reading their new books and drinking hot chocolate. Hank, you could probably work in a nap as well!
HALLIE EPHRON: I live in a town where more kids take Irish Step Dancing than ballet. My neighbors were the Murphys, the Murphys, and the Murphys. I’m very fond of my neighbors, Irish soda bread is ok, but my memories of St. Patrick's Day in Boston’s Southie are all about sloppy drunks and how dangerous it was for the long-haired and bearded to attend the Parade. People got beat up.
Corned Beef and Cabbage? Maybe someone can share the trick to buying/cooking corned beef that doesn’t taste like boiled socks.
LUCY BURDETTE: Jenn, I love your holiday, let’s do it! We can add in something delicious to eat. And definitely Hank’s nap…
Hallie, I never thought I liked St Patrick’s Day food until I made my own soda bread and corned beef and cabbage. Both were delicious!
https://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com/2021/12/irish-soda-bread-take-one-lucyburdette.html
https://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com/2022/03/corned-beef-and-cabbage-in-slow-cooker.html
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I like to make corned beef on St. Patrick's Day, but it is so salty! (Can't get Hallie's "boiled socks" description out of my head…) And Rick doesn't particularly like it, so maybe I'll celebrate with leek and potato soup, instead. With Irish Soda bread!
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| Baily Puggins by DaPuglet (Flickr) |
Cinco de Mayo is fun here in Texas, but if we were adding a day to the calendar, I think I'd go with Jenn's Jolabokaflod. What bliss. And I'm always so proud of myself when I remember how to spell it!
JULIA: Now it's your turn, dear readers! What are you doing to celebrate the wearing o' the green? And what's your vote for Best New Holiday to incorporate into our marvelous multicultural calendar?
I am definitely voting for Hank’s National Sleep Day and Jenn’s Jolabokaflod . . .
ReplyDeleteWe’re celebrating, but very low-key: wear something green and eat corned beef and cabbage, Irish soda bread, apple cake, and a glass of Guinness . . . .
Joan, that's more than I'm doing! PS, you're the winner of ALL THAT IS HIDDEN, so contact Rhys through her website and she can send you the book!
DeleteOh, my . . . I'm so excited! Thank you . . . .
DeleteI'm all for the “national get back your lost hour of sleep day.” Re: May 1st, when I was in elementary school, we celebrated "May Day" with crepe paper streamers, braiding them as we walked around a May Pole. (I think dancing around it would have been too chaotic for the teachers to manage.) I don't remember if in the adult world anything was highlighting May Day, but it was a big deal in schools.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, my children went to parochial schools, and May Day was a BIG deal there. There was a May Pole, and a parade, and crowning Mary the Queen of May with a special song: "Bring Flowers of the Rarest." I love it because by May 1st it actually feels like spring here in Maine - Easter is as often snowy as not.
DeleteA big deal in elementary schools, that is. Nothing happened in junior high or high.
ReplyDeleteThese are great! I don't even own a green shirt, but I'm sure a beer is in my future before the day ends.
ReplyDeleteWe could add Sete de Setembro, Brazilian independence day. I don't remember how we celebrated it there (Sept 7, 1970 was a LONG time ago), but it's sure to have Carnaval dancing, delicious seafood stews and coconut sweets, and caipirinha, their version of a mojito.
Excellent suggestion, Edith - any excuse for caipirinhas and Brazilian BBQ is a "yes" with me!
DeleteLooking in my closet: no green! Zip zilch nada … in my elementary school you’d get hit for not wearing green and where I grew up Irish were mighty thin on the ground. Going to make Lucy’s Irish soda bread…
ReplyDeleteHallie, I'm in gray and navy because I don't have anything WARM enough for my old, cold house in green.
DeleteFrom Celia: I’ve been fascinated by the immigrant national holiday celebration thing ever since I got to the USA. As an immigrant I say where’s my holiday? No green beer, clothes or corned beef here. Simple dinner tonight - baked potatoes though the veggies are green. I want Jens holiday - Jolabokaflod with Hanks naps attached and perhaps can only be celebrated in our pj’s.
ReplyDeleteBoxing Day of course!
Deleteand what about Guy Fawkes? Fireworks. Failed rebellion. What's not to love? --Melanie
DeleteI have LONG thought we ought to add Guy Fawkes/ Bonfire night to the American calendar. You think the early English settlers would have approved of the political sentiments behind it - I can only assume they didn't look fondly on the drunkenness that usually accompanies the bonfire and fireworks.
DeleteI’ll go with any holiday as long as there is food – preferably authentic. Yesterday I had to take a quick tour to town (there was said to be butter on sale – NOT). Anyway, there was a whole chicken there for $12 (for Holi, I think). Regular chickens slightly smaller were $15 and up. I will be looking for Indian recipes to respect my cheaper chicken. I love corned beef & cabbage (grew up in a fishing town with a lot of Newfoundland people – they eat lots of salt beef.) Corned Beef & Sauerkraut is even better.
ReplyDeleteA British holiday would surely feature Fish & Chips or Yorkshire puds. My granddaughter – age 6 – goes to a school where there are only 2 ‘white’ kids in her class. They celebrate every holiday on the calendar with culture, clothing and food, and lots of talk about the day. At her birthday party last month only she and her best friend were non-international.
Margo, I do love both fish & chips (which you can see all over Maine, a state settled by mostly English peoples) and Yorkshire pud, but I do wonder if the, shall we say, reputation for English cuisine is one of the impediments to adopting British holidays. I knew a woman who once confidently said the best food the English ever came up with was curry and chutney... :-D
DeleteI will wear something green today, but the closest I am going to get to corned beef and cabbage is a Reuben sandwich. Even then I may have a Rachel instead, replacing the corned beef with a little more heart-healthy turkey. No beer for me green or otherwise, thank you. We already had our Shamrock shakes the other day as sometimes McDonald’s runs out and part of the proceeds from our area restaurants go to the Ronald McDonald House here in Rochester, MN.
ReplyDeleteI want to resurrect May baskets on May Day in my neighborhood. Everything is more fun with kids though.
I’m all in for Jolabokaflod, perhaps moving it to mid-January so it can step out of the shadow of Christmas and really shine on its own.
Brenda, I am passionate about Reubens - that's the reason I rush out to take advantage of the sale prices on corned beef leading up to today. I made an amazing Reuben casserole for my friend who is doing Keto and not eating bread: bite size pieces of corned beef in a casserole dish, topped with a can of saurkraut, drizzled generously with Russian dressing, and then topped with slices of Swiss. 20 minutes at 350°. It would also be a brilliant way to do a bunch of sandwiches all at once - just toast some rye and then layer with a section of the casserole.
DeleteNot sure if it is generational or regional, but for me a Rueben is pastrami (not corned beef). And a Rachel is the corned beef. Brenda, your turkey being a Rachel sent me to Google, which boggled my mind with a Rachael being Turkey pastrami and a Reuben corned beef. Note to self: read menu carefully before ordering next time. Happy St Pat’s! Elisabeth
DeleteElisabeth, that led me to research the difference between pastrami and corned beef. Pastrami comes from the point of the brisket which has a higher fat content and corned beef comes from the flat of the brisket which is leaner. I also found that sometimes the Rachel has coleslaw with the turkey instead of sauerkraut.
DeleteJulia, your Reuben casserole recipe sounds really good. I usually only have a Reuben at a restaurant because my husband won't eat it. I once ordered Reuben balls from the appetizer menu at a bar and got to eat them all myself because no one else in the group would touch them! A local restaurant has a Reuben flatbread pizza on the menu that is very tasty too.
DeleteIt's Fish Fry Friday, so I won't be making an Irish dinner. One of our favorite family holidays is Pi Day, on March 14th. I made a mushroom and asparagus quiche.
ReplyDeleteI celebrated a wonderful Pi day at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics when Youngest was a student there, Margaret. EVERYTHING for dinner was a pie or quiche, and the kids had a Pi reciting contest to see who could get the farthest. I'm a huge fan of both sweet and savory pies, so I agree, we need to expand the reach of 3/14.
DeleteI published a "Killer Pie" short story set at a high school Pi Day dinner on 3/14/16. I included pie-throwing at teachers, a sing-a-long with "Bye Bye Miss American Pie"...and an attempted murder.
DeleteMy mom used to tell us we should wear orange on St. Patrick's Day because our grandma was from Londonderry--definitely not a good idea in some parts of the US!
ReplyDeleteI think we should add a Mexican holiday that they actually celebrate in Mexico--Mexican Independence Day, September 16. It involves food (chiles en nogada, yumm!) and drink (tequila), dancing, mariachi music and on the Eve (Sept 15) an opportunity to go outside and yell loudly (el grito)
I'm all for that one!
DeleteYeah, I'm not sure wearing orange on March 17 would go over in very many places in the US, Gillian! I love the idea of Mexican Independence Day - who doesn't need a socially sanctioned excuse to go outside and yell loudly?
DeleteI would love that!
DeleteI have a lot of green tops in different shades so wearing green will not be a problem for me today. Alas, that's probably the best I can do, St. Paddy's-wise.
ReplyDeleteI love Jenn's book holiday idea but once a year is just not enough. Monthly would suit me much better!
Clearly, Judi, we need to find one holiday per month that allows up to stay up late reading new books! Also, if you see this: you won Liz Milliron's book, THE TRUTH WE HIDE! Send me an email at julia spencer fleming at the Google mail (smush my name together.)
DeleteWow! Thank you! Can't think of anything much better than winning a book you know will be so good right from page one!
DeleteFor me the only thing to celebrate today is corned beef, and this year we’re not having it, being a Friday in Lemt and all that.
ReplyDeleteI usually make my own though. It’s every easy and a thousand times better than anything bought in a store. But it involves a week of brining in the fridge not to mention taking out a second mortgage for the brisket.
And lots of Guinness
Remind me next year to post the recipe is I can find it.
Ann, I think Sam Sifton had a recipe in the NYT this week. I'm never sure I can fit the brined brisket in my fridge for a week!
DeleteAnn, that makes me think of one of my favorite German dishes, saurbraten, which is also simple to make - but requires the space in your fridge to pickle the rump roast for several days.
DeleteJulia and Deb. I put it all is a big plastic bag with a good seal. It’s much easier to wedge into the fridge
DeleteWe will have cream of celery root soup and Irish soda bread for dinner today. Holidays in Tampa are more popular during tourist season. So First Night (New years eve) and Gasparilla - Tampa's answer to Mardi Gras when a fake pirate in a fake boat invades the Tampa waterfront. Races food parades, the whole mrgillah. I am all for nap with a cat day. Or, how about National Arbor Day when everyone plants a tree.
ReplyDeleteWe can put our own twist on Arbor Day, Coralee - everyone plants a tree, and then sits beneath a mature one and reads a book!
DeleteDefinitely Irish ancestry here, but like Gillian B above, I should probably be wearing orange. And I would love a good Reuben sandwich for lunch. As for a new national holiday, I believe some enlightened politicians are working on it--the four-day work week, in which everyone gets a day off every single week!
ReplyDeleteI've been hearing about that, Flora, and what a difference that would make in everyone's work-life balance!
DeleteI have socks with shamrocks. I have shamrock earrings, though they are gold, not green. I dislike corned beef and cabbage so that's a pass. Where I was growing up, you would get pinched if you didn't have green. Of course, if we got pinched but had green you were allowed to pinch back, twice. My sister got to a lot of punching back, she has green eyes. I'll vote for Jolabokaflod, but it should be twice a year, winter and summer. In the summer we can sit under a tree or in a shady spot and drink iced tea.
ReplyDeleteO should have added that a Ruben is about the only way I enjoy corned beef.
DeleteDeana, go back in the comments; I shared an amazing and super simple Reuben casserole with Brenda Gaskill. (I also never use corned beef in a boiled dinner - I far prefer it as a Reuben.)
DeleteI am all for Jolabokaflod. Books, chocolate, pajamas… sounds perfect.
ReplyDeleteI do have a little Irish ancestry on my mom’s side but sadly know nothing about them. So I’ll bust out some green socks today. I don’t dare wear a green shirt, the color is ghastly on me.
Jennifer, I used to have SO much green back when I was a redhead. Then I went silver and all those autumnal colors look, as you say, ghastly on me. I edited almost all of them out of my wardrobe (I just remembered I do have green earrings - better go upstairs and put them on.)
DeleteI’m in blue a T-shirt with a giant shamrock on it. It’ll have to do!
DeleteYears ago I had a business friend who always sent holiday cards on offbeat dates, rather than at Christmas: New Year's, Groundhog Day. Columbus Day, Thanksgiving. She would have a dozen fun suggestions for this.
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of Thanksgiving, since it is all about family and gratitude.
Amazingly, I brought a green sweater to Colorado with me. I can wear it while I shuttle my daughter around to her PT session and other errands.
I never knew I had Irish or Scottish heritage until I got the DNA tests done. And more than just a smidge.
DeleteThose DNA tests turn up some interesting results! My friend, who was staying with me this past week, had hers done and discovered far from being almost all Scots and English, as the family lore went, she was three-quarters Irish by descent! Now she's poring over the genealogy, trying to figure out who came from where.
DeleteSimilarly, my son-in-law thought he was 100% Scottish. Nope, he actually has more Polish heritage than my daughters do!
DeleteAnd I am about 97% percent Scots/English. Might explain a few things...
DeleteHappy St. Patrick's Day! We are celebrating by having Irish Breakfast tea and potatoes O'Brien. There was a bartender named O'Brien during the California Gold Rush who whipped up this wonderful potato dish and it is named after him. I think there is a diner? pub? in San Francisco named after him.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was thinking of Rhys Bowen's Molly mysteries. The novel, ALL THAT IS HIDDEN, was just published this week in time for St. Patrick's Day.
Voting for the Christmas book flood. That would be a wonderful Holiday though I think of Joklaflod (sp?) as part of Christmas traditions?
Agree with Hank that we need a National Sleep Day!
There's a Children's Day celebration in Japan and I remember as a child, I said I wanted to celebrate Children's Day. LOL
I think they celebrate Chinese New Year, especially in San Francisco with a parade. Love Chinese food too. Cinco de Mayo and Juneteenth are other big celebrations in California, I think.
Cannot think of a new holiday I would like to celebrate. There always seems to be something to celebrate, though.
Diana
There always is if you have the right attitude, Diana! And you remind me of a good point - one of the best things about holidays are the themed novels and anthologies, where the stories are set around St. Paddy's Day, Hallowe'en, Valentine's Day, etc. I love those!
DeleteDiana, there's also a Latin American Children's Day, which is celebrated each year on April 30. After a pandemic break, we are planning to observe it at my church this year. It's a way to bring our English-speaking and Spanish-speaking families together.
DeleteI just saw via email that the Key West Library had a Holi celebration in their courtyard garden complete with lots of colored powder in the air! ~Emily Dame
ReplyDeleteNot surprised, Emily - I can really see that spreading in areas of the US where it's warm enough to get outside and dance and toss powder!
DeleteI made a vegetarian Rueben yesterday from a recipe in the NYT. It was so good! I am obsessed with Trader Joe's sauerkraut with Persian cucumbers and it was an excuse to use some.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the meat substitute, Debs?
DeleteJulia, I just looked it up and there doesn’t appear to be a meat substitute. It starts with the bread slathered with homemade Russian dressing on the inside, buttered on the outside. Swiss cheese is put on the dressing side of both pieces of bread and the buttered side is grilled until the cheese melts. Then it’s all piled with sauerkraut, onions and dill pickles. Sounds interesting! — Pat S.
DeleteYes, exactly. Except the TJ's sauerkraut has pickles in it, so I didn't add pickles. Or raw onion. I didn't have rye bread so used really good bakery sourdough. It was delicious.
DeleteI'm at least 1/16th Irish, thanks to a great-grandfather from County Cork--and there's probably more Irish in me that I don't know about. Sadly, there is no St. P's Day celebration in Switzerland (and why would there be?) But I have two Irish women friends who live in Bern, and I sent them texts! As for other holidays, Switzerland's National Day, August 1, is nice for us, but I don't think anyone else needs to bother with it. It's a day of fireworks, bonfires, and doing clichéd Swiss things like yodeling and throwing flags (that's like fancy baton twirling done with flags on short flagpoles). The different cantonal folk costumes are beautiful, and you sometimes see men and women wearing them if you catch a small-town parade. But there are no special foods, except for roasting sausages over a fire. Cinco de Mayo and Chinese New Year sound like more fun and better eating. Speaking of extra holidays, when I was a little girl we celebrated May 1 by making up little May baskets full of flowers and leaving them on neighbors' doorsteps. (This was in Virginia, I think.) Did anyone else do that?
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember picking lilies of the valley for May baskets for neighbors.
DeleteOur dear nextdoor neighbor's birthday is May 1st, and I have often given her small bouquets on that day.
Yes, May baskets! When I was a little girl, my mother would buy some flowers and we would also make some pipe-cleaner-and-tissue-paper ones to include with the baskets. This would have been when we lived in Alabama, so maybe it was more of a southern thing?
DeleteNope we did it in Seattle too. More a gardeners thing.
DeleteMy mother and her mother (who were definitely not Southern) from Portchester New York always did May Baskets and made them with me. We would walk to neighbors’ homes, hang the baskets on the door knobs, knock…and run and hide. How nice to remember this sweet time. Elisabeth
DeleteHow nice that you all remember this, too. Elisabeth, that's exactly what we did: hang the baskets on doorknobs, ring the bell, and run away. My mother was from St. Louis, so the Midwest must have done it, too!
DeleteMy beloved grandmother was born in South Dakota on this day in 1886 - a prairie child who became a remarkable storyteller, singer, puppeteer, seamstress, teacher. And although I have the requisite ancestry, it is she more than anything Irish that I honor on St. Patrick’s Day.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful legacy, Katherine! My dear sister Barb was also born on this day, and she's a very special person - maybe there's a little magic in the air for all of St. Patrick's children.
DeleteI do enjoy the shamrocks and leprechauns and festive green dress for St. Patrick's Day, but I don't really do anything for the day. I'll find something green to put on, or at least some St. Patrick's Day earrings. I had thought about going to Beef O'Brady's here in town and having a Bailey's Irish Cream Irish Coffee, but my team plays ball later in the NCAA tournament, and we opted to stay in. I won't be having any Irish dishes though. We'll have my crockpot chicken spaghetti. Nothing Irish there.
ReplyDeleteFor an added holiday, like many others here, I'd go with Jenn's Jolabokaflod. For those of us retired with no specific schedule, I think we should have one day a week spent in bed reading, although that's easier if you live alone. My husband thinks you need to be sick to spend the day in bed. But, anyway, I would want a new holiday built around reading.
Kathy, I just looked it up ; there are eight towns/cities in the US names Reading, the most well-known being, of course, Reading, PA. I bet if we started with their civic organizations, we could get a movement spreading across the country in a few years!
DeleteJulia, I'm in!
DeleteIn our younger days we had a lot of fun on St Paddy's day, in cities all over the country. It is universal! I fondly remember two ladies three sheets to the wind in the restroom of a St Paul, MN bar on the day debating whether Johnny Cash singing Ring of Fire was an Irish song or not. I have on a pair of green sweatpants today and some Irish shamrock themed socks. Obviously I don't plan to be see in public today. Growing up in Houston we had Go Texan Day where we wore cowboy gear to school and had a holiday the next day to go downtown for the rodeo parade. Cinco de Mayo is another fun holiday, at least in Houston. My husband would wear his t-shirt that says "Cinco de Mayo. Another reason to hate the French". Before anyone gets offended let me say Frank attended high school in Mexico City. Being a faded redhead I think we should celebrate Redhead Day, and honor us rare beasts, faded or otherwise. And I don't want to hear the word ginger.
ReplyDeleteI’m making corned beef and cabbage. Not sure why we only have it once a year, but what a treat! Especially leftover Reuben sandwiches. I might take Lucy’s suggestion and make soda bread! Oh, and Hank is spot on with the nap holiday.
ReplyDeleteI might stop for a Shamrock Shake. I'm rather surprised our bishop did not issue a dispensation from the Lenten obligation to refrain from meat today. He did it a few years ago when St. Patrick's was on a Friday in Lent.
ReplyDeleteAnd right now, I'm all for any holiday that gives me the opportunity for a nap.
I always realize on St. Patrick's Day that there is not a single green thing in my closet. It's not deliberate, I just don't seem to gravitate towards green clothes.
ReplyDeleteJulia, your casserole sounds yummy! I am not celebrating, except by going to the the podiatrist. Happy feet! I think the book festival should be a quarterly event, and that Napping Day should be weekly.
ReplyDeleteI do remind myself to wear green (ever since that long-ago day when I wore orange to work and hid in my office until I could go home to change) and I kept green shamrock stickers in my desk for students who forgot green. I have been craving a reuben sandwich (no potatoes allowed anymore). I never drank much, but green beer and popcorn could be fun (small beer, large popcorn ;-) However you celebrate, have fun.
ReplyDeleteI’m vegan, but I like to make a version of Colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale or both). Sometimes I add spicy mustard and fresh dill.
ReplyDelete