I have no Irish ancestry at all but I’ll usually make some effort to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day with my clothes or jewellery.
I had some shamrock earrings I bought in Ireland back in the 90s but they got stolen when our house was robbed a few years ago. Today I wore earrings with a Celtic pattern, green socks, an emerald necklace, and a green scrub hat at work. I’ve got several Irish colleagues, and when I spotted one this morning I greeted her with “Top o’ the morning to ya!”, to which she smiled weakly. I was a bit puzzled by this but didn’t think much of it until I was chatting to another Irish colleague this evening. I exclaimed that he wasn’t wearing anything green, and he pointed to his orange scrub had, which he was wearing in protest. What I hadn’t realised was that both he and my other colleague from earlier in the day were actually Protestants from Belfast, so all this Catholic rubbish about celebrating Saints days was a lot of nonsense as far as they were concerned. I was quite dismayed, but very grateful I hadn’t forked out large amounts of money yesterday for some replacement shamrock jewellery, even if it was very cute.
