Not to be a killjoy, but St. Patrick’s Day is the only day I claim to be Norwegian. My distaste for the festivities goes back long before I was political because it’s such an artificial thing. It’s been a long time since Tipperary for most Americans of Irish descent.
When I was 21-years-old, just out of the convent, & living in St. Paul, Minnesota, which once had a sizable Irish demographic, I was approached to be in the beauty contest for the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in the city. That was in 1966, not 1866. Having been in a pageant for my employer, I was already on to the misogynist & commercial purposes of beauty shows. And I was full of feminist outrage so I declined.
St. Patrick’s Day now is all about leprechauns & green beer, stripped of the rich cultural heritage & anti-colonial politics of Irish ancestry. If you don’t mind my saying so, it also has a large dose of white supremacy.
Having grown up with Norwegians, I like them & they don’t hold silly parades flaunting their nationality 100 years after they’ve been in the US. So today, je suis Norwegian.