Enough With the Green Beer

Sometimes it becomes necessary to take those long-held rituals and holiday observations and sweep them away. Just clear them out. Experience the whole thing differently. Find a new way to honor or remember or celebrate. These past few weeks have brought the expected notices for St. Patrick's Day: specials on corned beef and cabbage, green beer, green bow-ties, various holiday events to be held in Irish-like pubs that are closer in spirit to Dubuque than Dublin. In Chicago, they dye the river green. This sounded novel and exciting during my first year in the area. And then it didn't, although I wish the best to those who continually enjoy this limited-range phenomenon, year after year. Knock yourself out. Here's one admittedly biased suggestion: let's celebrate Ireland and the Irish by involving ourselves on the big day with something they have long valued, and that they are exceedingly good at—literature. A lot of the names are instantly recognizable: Wilde, Yeats, Synge, Joyce. Patrick Kavanagh and Edna O'Brien more recently. Ireland has been an incredible cradle for poets: in our time, Heaney, Muldoon, Boland, Mahon, McGuckian, Chuilleanáin (writing in English), and Ní Dhomhnaill (in Irish).