It used to bother me during High School History classes when the topic of Ellis Island came up. We would learn about the vast number of immigrants entering the nation for the first time and the vast number turned away. The question was posed, “Which country are your ancestors from?” and I found myself quite confused by the responses. “Ireland. Africa. Ireland. Ireland. Germany. Africa. Korea. Ireland.” I tried to do the math. If this small hick town in Alabama was filled with Irish descendants, then how many were in the next town over? The next state? How about Massachusetts? But there wasn’t a formula to understand the breeding habits of the Irish, it was something more. Yes, the students were lying, but not in a harmful way. They wanted to be Irish so bad they told themselves and others that they, and in America sometimes that’s all you need for it to be true, were Irish and they always have been. The teacher would then go on and talk about urban slums and Irish being turned away from work for the simple fact people thought they were a lower race. Then why has this attitude changed in the past 100 years? No, not changed, but performed a complete 180. How has this country ascended from tenements onto our cultural pedestal? I think it may have something to do with Luck.
The Irish are lucky enough to have a culture that makes up for their weather and cooking, and that is one of the reasons we love them so much. Americans are the number one consumer of Irish Folk Music CDs and River Dance DVDs, we throw bigger St. Patrick Day parades than Ireland itself, and we feed our children Lucky Charms each morning before school. Music, History, and Folktale have all been driving forces in our conversion into a Irish crazy nation.
People request Danny Boy at their funeral, for the sake of Danny Boy. This secular piece has become almost doctrine for even Protestant families in America. It’s not all old ballads though that have changed our perspective on that little green island. Bands such as U2, The Pogues, The Dubliners, Flogging Molly, and Sinead O’Conner have generated an Irish national pride that has crept onto non-Anglo Saxons and the like. It is because of their musical prowess and luck that people listened.
If you look at the reason behind having a St. Patrick’s Day, it is a wholly Catholic one. Patrick was a missionary from Rome, sent to Ireland to Christianize the natives. Today we spend this holiday drinking green beer and pinching people. Luckily, Americans don’t pay much attention to others people history, or we wouldn’t feel obliged to celebrate along with them. The same goes for Cinco de Mayo. Talking with psychology and history majors, I thought that there might be a connection between the resurgence of African pride in the 80’s and a white rebuttal to that in the form of Irish pride, because the Irish too were enslaved by the British and brought to the islands in the Caribbean to farm tobacco. These two slave traditions show two races clinging to a past where they have been mistreated and through the ages overcome tremendously. People always compare Kennedy to Obama, but never seem to mention this history that connects them.
This re-branding, as ad executives call it, is one of the ways Ireland became a “novelty nation” in my opinion. With all this attention from outsiders with little knowledge, Ireland has become a caricature to most Americans: a place filled with whiskey, leprechauns, red headed women, and more whiskey. This is where luck comes in again. The Irish are lucky that we like them, because as we see from other countries the American culture will soon be put in place right along with a puppet government. Our love for them may be a simple one, but in our defense we protect the things we love, and if anybody tries to steal our Lucky Charms, we will do whatever it takes to get them back.
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