St. Patrick's Day in Ireland

I know what you're thinking - St. Patrick's Day in the land of the green must be the real thing! You'd be surprised, though. St. Patrick's Day is a holiday. Everyone has the day off. There are parades in the bigger towns and of course most people are at the pub. But without the novelty of it being a day for the Irish - because when you're in Ireland, every day is the day of the Irish! - it's a bit lackluster. The biggest excitement is focused on the horse races in Cheltenham which means that tons of people pack themselves into the bookies' to place bets and crowd around the TVs in the pubs to watch their horses either win or lose it all for them. By 6:00, we were pretty tired of watching horses, and we didn't go out until 4:30.

In Indianapolis, there is a community of people who look forward to St. Patrick's Day every year. And even though it's annual, it's a novelty. We go to the parade, take the second half of the day off work (which is a novelty in and of itself) and head to the regular St. Patrick's Day haunts. We don't even have to make plans with friends of where to meet up and when because it's a foregone conclusion that we'll eventually see each other at one of the three or four places where we'd be likely to visit. We don our green, or in my case in the years since I met Tristan, my County Clare hurling jersey for true Irish authenticity. The excitement of seeing another friend of mine who nearly owns a jersey for each county and which one he will wear that particular year, and even having someone stop me because they recognize the Clare colors and strike up conversation are much more satisfying than watching a horse race.

Ironically, I think in future years, we may be looking to travel back to visit Indy for the Irish national holiday. It just means more.