The story of the transformation of St. Patrick’s Day is a story about the changing face of Ireland, north and south

By Adrian McMenamin

When I was the same age as my children today I remember this day in Belfast as one of quiet piety and early spring warmth: as with the last week, the weather in Ireland is often better, earlier, in the Spring than in Britain. We marked Ireland as we then saw ourselves – poor but pure and humble (even if some of us where murdering each other in the streets). All the wild celebrations and mawkish sentimentality, the leprechaun hats and all that, were for the Americans and other fake Oirish.

We sang our hymns – “Hail; glorious Saint Patrick, dear saint of our isle, on us thy poor children bestow a sweet smile”. The oul ones wore their shamrocks (I’d never any idea where they got it – certainly I’ve never seen it growing natively in Ireland, North or South) and maybe in the afternoon we’d go out for a trip.

And this was an Ireland, still, of remarkable religious observance – you could see wave after wave walk down my street to Mass at 9, 10 or 11. Yes, I’ll admit it. Although St Patrick wasn’t even Irish, never mind a Prod or a Mick – his Saint’s day was “our” holiday while “themuns” got 12 July.

My reaction in Britain to being asked how I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day used to be a growled “I don’t need some green beer to prove I’m Irish”. And, at heart, that is still sort of what I feel. Like many exiles, I am stuck in the moment of travel while the native land has moved on.

Because in many ways Ireland’s transformation from that offshore island of the 1970s to the busy European mainstream of today has been because the people actually grasped and then reshaped a global idea of what it was to be Irish that was fundamentally created by the power of Hollywood.

Riverdance, with its blend of global popular culture and Irish traditional dancing, was just one example of that progression – and it, like so much of the new Ireland, can trace its birth to that blessed year of 1994. The year of the first ceasefire, the year of celtic tiger, the year of the rainbow, though not quite the year that the idea of a holiday replaced that of a holy day – that had to wait a whole further twelve months and for the Irish government to get serious about promoting the day as a native celebration of all things kitchly Irish. DeV must have tumbled in his grave the day they made that decision.

The Irish got hold of the idea that they could claim the American festivities as their own and further build brand Ireland as the home of party. In short they repackaged something authentically American as genuinely Irish then sold it back to the world as the real deal.

Today many Irish traditionalists say that the country has gone to the dogs. At their most extreme these reactionaries think their loyalty to the true, eternal, Ireland gives them the right to murder and maim. But every person out on the street in a green wig today is a vote against that extremism and a rejection of the idea of Ireland as a provincial backwater.

If you want the proof of that look to Belfast. Where once the council refused to fund a St. Patrick’s Day event because it was claimed to be non-inclusive (their own bit of themuns and usuns) – today there is a cross community festival for all.

Religious observance in Ireland is at an all time low. Alcohol consumption per head remains amongst the highest in the EU. So welcome to 21st century Ireland – it has plenty of problems, as this last week has proved. But it is still a better place than it was.