The curiously twisted history of Cinco De Mayo

Contrary to popular opinion “Cinco de Mayo” isn’t Spanish for “ 5 ounces of Mayonnaise.” 
The fifth of May was a glorious day in the military annals of Mexico. 

Poor Mexico, it had only gained independence from Spain in 1810. On its 36th birthday it was invaded by the US (Which is how we got California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.)  After a Civil War in 1858 Mexico was flat broke.

So in 1862 those pesky French took advantage of the fact that we Americans we’re preoccupied with our Civil War. Using the excuse of some unpaid debts, the French invaded Mexico’s Gulf Coast and began a march towards the Capital. Their big idea was to install Napoleon III’s cousin, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, as ruler of Mexico.

However, a funny thing happened on the way to Mexico City.    

On the 5th of May, Cinco de Mayo, the French army encountered strong resistance at the Mexican forts of Loreto and Guadalupe.  There, a poorly armed militia of 4,500 Mexicans kicked some French derriere.  They defeated an army of 6,500 Frenchmen fabulously outfitted in uniforms by Coco Channel, saddlebags by Prada.

Unfortunately, the victory was short lived.
Napoleon ( Napster 3.0 ---Napoleon III , who was Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew ) sent 30,000 more troops and captured Mexico City one year later. Which is how for three years (1864-1867) the Archduke of Austria happened to be the ruler of our neighbor to the south. You know, you just can’t make this stuff up.

What happened to the Emperor Of Mexico?
The US eventually pressured the French into withdrawing (We cut off their supply of Jerry Lewis movies and they dropped the chalupa.)

In 1867 Max was captured by Mexican troops under Benito Juarez. He was tried and executed by firing squad. His body was shipped back to Austria where it lies entombed in Vienna in the Imperial Crypt. The inscription on his tomb reads: Yo Tien Taco Bell.

 

Cinco de Mayo isn't widely celebrated in Mexico.  It isn't their equivalent of our 4th of July, as most Yankees think. The major celebrations for Cinco de Mayo are in the state of Puebla where the battle took place.  However, here in the US, Cinco de Mayo has become kind of a St. Patrick’s Day or Columbus Day.  A day for Mexican-Americans to celebrate and take pride in Mexican history.  A Kiss me I’m Mexican day for everyone else. Most important, it's a chance for Anglos to get drunk eat chips and do a Mexican hat dance.

And that’s about all there is to say about the fifth day of May.

Adios, Vaya con dios.

I fart in the general direction of the French. 

Generalissimo Dano

The Twisted History of May Day

Sticker on Newsbox NYC 6/1/13

May Day! May Day!

(not to be confused with the international call of distress “M’aider! M’aider!” French for: Help me! Help me!)

There are two distinct May Days.

One is political and American. 

The other pagan and Greek.

If you walk into Union Square today you might come across both.

You’ll see posters on light poles announcing the annual May Fair at the Grace Church Sunday School and you’d see a demonstration for Equality in Worker’s Rights.

Let’s talk politics first.

May Day Parade NYC 1910

Happy May Day Comrades.
May Day was invented in the United States and yet we are one a handful of industrialized nations that neglects to celebrate it.

On May 1, workers around the world will celebrate their Labor Day with rallies and speeches, picnics, demonstrations and maybe a riot or two.

Not many Americans realize that the celebrations being held in foreign lands, like the May Day Parade in Moscow, actually commemorate historical events here in the United States.

On May 1st, 1886, the American Federation of Labor declared a national strike to demand an eight-hour workday. At the time, six-day weeks and 14 hour workdays were the norm. (Kind of sounds like the Advertising Business doesn’t it?)

In Chicago there were riots and slayings of strikers. The police tried to break up a rally in Haymarket Square, a bomb was thrown. A policeman was killed. The Police fired wildly into the crowd wounding 200 and killing four strikers and apparently a few of their fellow policemen. 8 labor leaders were put on trial with absolutely no evidence they had any connection to the bombing. Most of them were executed.

The trial enraged labor groups and protests were held around the world.

In 1889, the Socialist International declared May 1st a day of demonstrations, and since 1890 these have been held annually worldwide.

Labor leaders in America lobbied for a national holiday to recognize workers. By the 1890’s May first was officially being celebrated in several states and was called “Labor Day”

In 1893 Federal Troops, ordered by President Cleveland, violently suppressed the Pullman Strike. Grover, in a bid to restore his tarnished image, declared a national holiday in honor of workers and intentionally chose a September date to keep it months away on the calendar from the Socialist “May Day – Labor Day”

This didn’t stop May Day celebrations in the United States. The biggest one every year was held in Union Square Park, which in the 1920’s got the nickname Red Square.

During the Red Scare days of the Cold War Congress officially declared May I, “Loyalty Day”. It was an all American anti American Communist Party kind of party.

During the 1950s, the largest Loyalty Day parade in the country was here in New York City. Its job was to distract attention from the Union Sq. rallies and Communist Party march on the same day.

By the time the Vietnam War entered the picture Loyalty Day Parades petered out, but so did May Day Parades. So I guess they had done their job.

So on this May Day I exhort the workers of New York to Unite, link arms head over to Union Square and see if you can hear the long dead ghosts of Labor leaders crying out to masses. Failing that, the Farmer’s Market is open so grab yourself some nice organic produce.

Comrade Dan

The Other May Day

Here’s the skinny on the more ancient randy celebrations of the first of May.

The merry old month of May gets its name from the Greek goddess Maia daughter of Zeus and mother of Hermes (The Romans called him Mercury – he’s the guy standing on top of Grand Central Station.)

The first of May --May Day --was midway between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. Agricultural/fertility celebrations were held to mark the time.

At Greek festivals to honor Dionysus ( the god of wine and fertility) folks in togas drank wine and danced around a large phallus. The Romans would change the name from Dionysus to Bacchus and from that we get the expression “bacchanalian feast.”

Somehow this morphed into a custom in the Middle Ages where on May 1^st commoners would erect a large pole (You don’t have to be Freud to get the symbolism there) attached vines or ribbons to it and the young studs and lovelies of the village would dance around the pole until they all became intertwined. (Think -- Medieval Twister©.)

There would be a character present called Robin Goodfellow 

(sometimes called the Green Man) who was the Lord of Misrule for this day. 

Here's the wiki on The Green Man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man

He would thumb his nose at authority and act as a mock minister and declare the lustful couples “officially” married and they’d head off into the green together.

Any resultant offspring from the merrymaking were called “Merry- begats”. These love children were said to have been fathered by god, a rather convenient excuse for the men folk don’t you think?

I also think it quite fitting that the political May Day is a day to question "the establishment." A bit of serendipitous synchronicity.

Eventually the festivities were banned, but as we’ve seen before folklore and tradition have a way of sneaking things back in disguise and so the character of Robin Goodfellow came back as the legend of Robin Hood, a man in green who understood the desires of common folk and would thumb his nose at repressive authority.

Robin Goodfellow had a companion; her name was the May Queen.

She was chosen from the local beauties –kind of a Medieval Home Coming Queen. The May Queen herself was a replacement for a pagan goddesses who was always associated with the festivities.

When Robin Hood replaced Robin Goodfellow – Maid Marian subbed for the pagan Goddess.

And that’s why today in England, Maid Marian the Queen of the May, mounted on a white horse is the central figure of festivities.

The Irish had their own May festival called "Bealtaine" On the eve of May 1^st bonfires were lit on the hills to draw the sun back to earth. Villagers jumped over the bonfires in search of good luck or in help finding a mate.

Some modern celebrations of Beltaine resemble a Celtic Burning Man Festival

Beltaine. Girls and Boys Gone Wild.

According to Irish superstition the woman who washes her face with morning dew on May Day will be beautiful; the man who washes his hands will be skilled with knots and nets. And if you lived near water, you were supposed to make a garland and cast it into a lake or river to honor the water spirits. (It’s not too late to get a bouquet over at Union Square and chuck it into the Hudson.)

When the Romans arrived in the British Isles they brought their own traditions to the party. They already had a celebration from April 28^th -May 2^nd called Floralia. It was in honor of the goddess of flowers named --you guessed it --Flora. As part of the festivities, women and homes were decked out in flowers.

All of this stuff melded together. And eventually organized religion outlawed the randy stuff and made the whole fertility fest a cute little celebration where innocent children sometimes dressed in togas wearing flowers dance around a Maypole. 

And nowadays the closest that we come to honoring fertility in May is when we give mom a card on Mother’s Day the second Sunday in the month named for the Mother of Hermes.

Have a Merry May Day, a beautiful Bealtaine, and a festive Floralia everyone.

Medieval Twister© anyone?

Dano

Lord of Misrule

The curiously twisted history of Earthday

They say it’s your Earthday.

On your Day Planner (printed on partially recycled paper one would hope) you may notice that  April 22^nd is officially called Earth Day.

You’d figure there would be a pretty straightforward explanation of the origins of Earth Day but noooooooooooo.

Earth the planet may have one mother but a lot of people are claiming paternity for Earth the Day. The two leading folks are former Senator Gaylord Nelson and a chap named John McConnell, founder of the Earth Society.

Back in 1962 Senator Nelson claims he persuaded JFK to go on an unheard of environmental tour of the country (in his gas guzzling, smog-belching stretch Cadillac no doubt.)  He claims that he wanted to make the environment a political issue. To quote Nelly:

Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969

In 1969 he watched anti-war demonstrations and noticed that campus teach-ins were an effective way to educate and organize American youth. He thought the same could be done for the environment. And thus in his words:

At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate.

On Oct 3^rd 1969 a scant week or two after Gaylord’s speech and a few hundred miles south in San Francisco -- the other paternity suspect John McConnell got the Mayor of San Francisco to read a proclamation penned by McConnell that introduced the notion and the precise words “Earth Day”:

Here’s the proclamation:

WHEREAS;

 As Earthians we need a day to celebrate our global unity and

 destiny, and

WHEREAS;

 The observance of EARTH DAY will alert concern and interest for

 our planet -- with its precious treasure of living things, and

WHEREAS;

 EARTH DAY is to remind each person of his right, and the equal

 right of every other person, to the use of this global home and

 at the same time the equal responsibility of each person to

 preserve and improve the Earth and the quality of life thereon,

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED;

 That in the City and County of San Francisco March 21st (Vernal

 Equinox) be the designated EARTH DAY - a special day to remember

 Earth's tender seedlings of life and people; a day for planting

 trees and grass and flowers, for cleaning streams and wooded

 glens. That to further these purposes a Silent Hour For Peace (a

 time for quiet reflection or prayer) be observed on Earth Day at

 19:00 G.M.T. (11:00 a.m. P.S.T.). That on EARTH DAY the EARTH

 FLAG, which portrays in its center our "Beautiful Blue Planet;"

 be flown to encourage mutual respect for Earth and all its

 people.

There are a few interesting nuggets in there if you Earthians look closely enough. One of which is that Earth Day was to be celebrated on the Vernal Equinox, not as it is today on April 22^nd.  Aside from the fact that symbolically the Vernal Equinox has always been a welcome home Mother Nature type celebration, the date itself was something the entire planet earth could synchronize its calendar to.

The April 22^nd date came from the Gaylord faction, they had the Washington Beltway clout to declare a National Environmental Day. That particular date was chosen because it happened to be convenient for organizing.  Aside from that – the March date could still be rather chilly in the East and Midwest. April promised nicer weather for folks planning on going out into nature.  Some right wing wackos (but I repeat myself) claim the April 22^nd date was chosen because it is also Lenin’s birthday. (I thought Lenin was a member of the Red Party not the Green Party.) Somehow in their DDT addled brains, being a friend of the environment makes you an enemy of democracy.  I can hear them now –“Karl Marx was a tree-hugger. Saddam Hussein recycles!” They’d be shocked to learn it was Richard Nixon who started the Environmental Protection Agency.

The other interesting nugget is the mention of an “Earth Flag” flying above City Hall.  How was there an Earth Flag before there was an Earth Day? This is where it becomes clearer that McConnell may have been the first Earthian.

For those of you too young to remember, or not yet a gleam in a parent’s eye, 1969 was one wacko year in one very disturbing decade.

JFK was assassinated in 63, Malcolm X in 65, MLK in 68, RFK in 68. There was rioting in the streets. The Days of Rage in Chicago, the Long Hot Summers with Newark and Detroit burning in July of 1967.

The war was raging in Vietnam. The nightly news had footage of American troops using napalm and Agent Orange to defoliate the jungles. The skyline of most major cities couldn’t be seen through the smog, America’s great rivers oozed with mercury.

69 was the culmination. There was the Woodstock Festival and the My Lai massacre.  And Man actually walked on the moon. Some claimed the lunar landing threw the universe out of orbit (which would explain how the ‘69 Mets won the World Series.)

The moon thing was key though. Before the lunar landing we had unmanned missions to orbit the moon. Those missions sent back pictures of the earth as well as the moon. It’s hard to explain to people nowadays how shocking it was to see a real-time picture of Earth from space. The Earth looked blue and beautiful and delicate and small. Small enough to break.

That sight had an effect on Mc Connell:

When the first photo of Earth appeared in Life (magazine) in 1969, I was deeply stirred -- as were many other people -- by what I saw. … In viewing the first photo from space, thereby sharing in part the experience of the astronauts, we experienced in a deep and emotional way a new awareness of our planet. As I looked at the Life photo it occurred to me that an Earth flag could symbolize and encourage our new world view and that the Earth as seen from space was the best possible symbol for this purpose.

NASA sent him a transparency of the photo used in Lifeand he copyrighted the Earth Flag in 1969. 

McConnell again:

Our first 500 flags were produced in a hurry, in order to use them at the "Moon Watch" at Central Park in New York City. This was the big event where we watched and celebrated the first landing on the Moon on 20 July 1969.

10,000 gather in Central Park to watch the moon landing.

The key thing is he had copyrighted the name and produced the flag months before Sen. Gaylord’s Seattle Conference or had officially introduced the idea of a global holiday called Earth Day at a UNESCO Conference on the Environment.

So McConnell looks like the real Earth Day daddy.

Of course, the advent of Earth Day itself was the culmination of a long series of events.

The true mother of the modern environmental movement would have to be Rachel Carson author of the seminal work “Silent Spring”. Published in 1962 it foretold a day when there were no songbirds in spring.

Another notable year on the environmental timeline would be 1967 --a group of volunteers on Long Island halted the spraying of DDT and formed a group called The Environmental Defense Fund. They would eventually get the FDA to ban the use of DDT in 1969.

Earth Day itself went from being a local celebration in San Francisco in March of 1970, to a national celebration in April of 1970. It was celebrated all over the earth on March 21, 1971 when Secretary General U Thant proclaimed the first worldwide Earth Day.

Earth Day was celebrated by most of the Earth last month. Wha?

Yep, San Francisco, Berkeley and Denver also celebrated the original Vernal Equinox date.

Here in the rest of the U.S. this is officially Earth Week and Friday is Earth Day. I don’t think the world really cares when we Americans celebrate Earth Day. But, it’s fairly important to our fellow earthlings that we do contemplate the environment. After all, we Americans make up only 4% of the world’s population; yet consume 25% of its resources.

By the way, you might be surprised to learn that in relation to the rest of the country you New Yorkers who live in this concrete jungle are comparatively Green. This is mainly due to the fact that Gothamites are walkers, who don’t own cars or lawns, nor require lawn mowers, pesticides nor fertilizer. And the city grows vertically instead of sprawling horizontally.

So my tender seedlings of life, I exhort you to put on your Earth Shoes and get out and spend some time with your mother this weekend. You haven’t communed with her in a while, have you?

Your Fellow Earthian,

Dano

The curiously twisted history of 4-20 day

SOME PEOPLE CALL ME THE GANGSTA OF LOVE

Whoaaaaaaaa Dude –happy highday.

Today is April 20th, the 4th month, 20th day of the year --420 Day.

Four Twenty Day is the High Holy Day of Stoners. The red-letter day* for Mother Marijuana. The happiest day of the year for smokers, jokers & midnight tokers.

*(Medieval Church Calendars had special Holy Days and Saint’s Feast Days printed in red ink. Thus --special days became known as “red-letter days.”

Last year I was scolded for not sending out a memo in time. (Dude, have another Twinkie and chill.) Friends recounted fond college memories of participating in Four Twenty Day ceremonies down at the Quad (interestingly enough, the best stories came from straight-laced Account People.) Some said tradition called for folks to light up at 4:20 am then again at 4:20 pm.

There's lots of folklore, urban myth and just plain whackjob stoner nonsense about the day.

Me, I'm too buzzed to research it all, so I'll just laze out and cut & paste the relevant truth from snopes.com.

Snagged from Snopes.com:

Claim: '420' entered drug parlance as a term signifying the time to light up a joint.

Status: True.

Origins: Odd terms sneak into our language every now and then, and this is one of the oddest. Everyone who considers himself in the know about the drug subculture has heard that '420' has something to do with illegal drug use, but when you press them, they never seem to know why, or even what the term supposedly signifies.

It's both more and less than people make it out to be. '420' began its sub-rosa linguistic career in 1971 as a bit of slang casually used by a group of high school kids at San Rafael High School in California. '420' (always pronounced "four-twenty," never "four hundred and twenty") came to be an accepted part of the argot within that group of about a dozen pot smokers, beginning as a reminder of the time they planned to meet to light up, 4:20 p.m. Keep in mind this wasn't a general call to all dope smokers everywhere to toke up at twenty past four every day; it was twelve kids who'd made a date to meet near a certain statue. It's thus incorrect to deem that '420' originated as a national or international dope-smoking time, even though the term began as a reference to a particular time of day.

These days '420' is used as a generic way of declaring one likes to use marijuana or just as a term for the substance itself. Its earliest connotation of having to do with the time a certain group of students congregated to smoke wacky tobaccy is unknown to the overwhelming majority of those who now employ the term.

And here are the whackjob, stoner,

totally bogus claims about 420 Day:

420 is the penal code section for marijuana use in California.

Untrue. Section 420 of the California penal code refers to obstructing entry on public land. The penal codes of other states list different entries for 420, but none of them matches anything having to do with marijuana.

However, on 1 January 2004 the Governor of California signed that state's Senate Bill 420 which regulates marijuana used for medical purposes. This bill comes years after the term '420' was associated with marijuana and indeed its number likely was chosen because of the existing pop culture connection. This is the tail wagging the dog, not the other way around.

It's the Los Angeles or New York police radio code for marijuana smoking in progress.

It's not the police radio code for anything, let alone that.

It's the number of chemical compounds in marijuana.

The number of chemical compounds in marijuana is 315, according to the folks at High Times magazine.

April 20 is the date that Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, or Janis Joplin died.

Though these performers were strongly identified with drug use during their brief lifetimes and the emerging drug culture after their demises, none of them kicked the bucket on April 20. Morrison died on July 3, Hendrix on September 18, and Joplin on October 4.

The 20th of April is the best time to plant marijuana.

There's no one "best time" -- that answer would change from one part of the country to another, or even one country to another.

It's the code you send to your drug dealer's pager.

Yeah, right. All drug dealers recognize a '420' page as "Please be waiting on the corner with my baggie of wildwood weed."

When the Grateful Dead toured, they always stayed in Room 420.

Untrue, says Grateful Dead Productions spokesman Dennis McNally.

Spurious etymologies and uncertain definition aside, '420' has slipped into a position of semi-respectability within the English lexicon. Various freewheeling cities annually celebrate "hemp fests" on April 20. There's a 4:20 record label in California, and a band called 4:20. Atlanta's Sweetwater Brewing Co. sells its 420 Pale Ale in supermarkets and opens its doors to the public at 4:20 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. New York's 420 Tours sells low-cost travel packages to the Netherlands and Jamaica. Highway 420 Radio broadcasts "music for the chemically enhanced."

420s are routinely slipped into popular movies and television shows. In Fast Times at Ridgemont High the score of the football game was 42-0. Most of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are set to 4:20 (but not all — when the kid receives the watch it's set at 9:00). And there are many other instances, so keep your eyes peeled.

However, as amusing as it is to tie 420 to pot smoking and hunt for it in popular movies, the number has its dark side. Hitler was born on 20 April 1889, and the massacre of 13 victims at Columbine High School in Colorado took place on 20 April 1999.



That last bit was a bit of a buzzkill.

Happy 420 Day folks.

Dano
Resident Space Cowboy

And, since I bring it up…..

An interesting aside about the lyrics in the Steve Miller song The Joker,

its weirdo lyrics leave many folks mystified:


Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice
Cause I speak of the pompitous of love

When asked the meaning of “pompitous” Miller claimed it was nonsense.
But music dicks did some sleuthing and found that Miller had lifted lyrics from a few old R& B tunes.

He swiped “pompitous of love” from a tune called “the Letter” written in 1954 by a guy named Vernon Green. Vernon apparently slurred his words but in his song he was singing about a puppet-tess of love. In Green’s words: “A term I coined to mean a secret paper-doll fantasy figure” A female puppet.

The song “the Joker” contains a double dose of lyrical larceny. It’s is also remembered for its memorable back end lyrics:

"I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree.
Lovey dovey, lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time."

They weren’t stolen from Vernon Green.
Nope, they were swiped wholesale from a 1953 hit by the Clovers’ called "Lovey Dovey" containing the lyrics:

"I really love your peaches wanna shake your tree
Lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time."

Best part of all this is that in 1990 Steve Miller won a lawsuit against the Geto Boys for stealing “his” lyrics.

So “The Joker” was memorable, it just wasn’t original.
In other words, the Space Cowboy was a Cattle Rustler.
This blog entry is officially over. You can now go back to gazing at your navel

The Curiously Twisted History of St. Patrick's Day

Appropriately enough, there’s a good deal of blarney out there about Ole St. Pat.

What is known is that he was born in 389 A.D. in Banwen, Wales.

His name wasn’t Patrick, it was Maewyn Succat. The moniker “Patrick” was given to him later in life by Pope Celestine.

At the age of 16, this not particularly religious boy, was kidnapped by Irish Raiders, brought to Ireland and enslaved. During his time on the Emerald Isle he became a devout Christian. FULL STOP! He became a devout Christian?  I thought it was Paddy who introduced Christianity to Ireland? Nope.

Legend holds – and sometimes legend is a real whopper --that Christianity was brought to England and Ireland by Joseph of Arimathea or his son Josephus.  Joe of A Sr., you might remember, was the guy who offered up his own tomb for Christ’s burial. Legend holds that somehow or another he got a hold of the cup Christ used in the Last Supper and used it to catch his blood as he died on the cross.  Then, either he or his son took the cup to England and buried it.  This cup was known in French as the “Sang Real” –the True Blood. Say “Sang Real” three times fast and you’re saying Grail –the Holy Grail – Monty Python and all that Jazz.  Point is:  Ireland had Christians before Patrick.

Eventually Maewyyn escaped back to England joined the clergy and was ordained a priest. After Bishop Palladius, the first Irish missionary croaked in 431, Pope Celestine gave Maewyyn the new name of "Patercius" (from Latin "pater civium" meaning "the father of his people" think "paternity.")

Patercius went back to the Old Sod to minister to the Christians already living there and to convert the rest of the unwashed heathen.

Did St. Patrick really drive the snakes out of Ireland? 
People who know such things say there never were snakes in Ireland.  The story is symbolic. Ireland was pagan. The snake has always been symbolic of the devil (See Adam & Eve.) So in other words, St. Patrick rid Ireland of its pagan customs and gave Da Divil a boot in tha arse ta boot.

The Shamrock
The vast majority of the Irish were pagans. Members of Ireland’s ruling class were called Druids. It was from this class that the pagan priests emerged.  They worshipped nature and considered the shamrock a sacred plant. Three was also a mystical number to the Celts. (Here’s a weird “one world” connection there is a trefoil plant in Arabia called a shamrakh. This same plant is considered sacred in Iran).

As the story goes, Patrick, knowing the shamrock’s mystical importance used it to explain the Christian concept of the Trinity: Father, Son & the Holy Ghost/Spirit.

Problem is --the first written citation of this story did not appear until the time of the Protestant Reformation, nearly a thousand years after his death. Odds are it never happened.

Irish legend also credits St. Pat with the idea of using the pagan veneration of the sun for Christian advantage. He added a sun-like disc to the Christian crucifix, creating the Celtic cross. Maybe.

St. Patrick’s Day

This holy day commemorates the anniversary of his death on March 17^th 461 AD.

St. Patrick’s Day is the religious feast day of the patron saint of Ireland. No surprise then that in this very Catholic country it was merely a religious holy day. In fact, up until the 1970s, Irish laws dictated that all pubs were to remain locked tight on March 17th. It was a day to go to mass, not Bennigans. Notice the word “was”. They can thank the Yanks for that. Because it was in America that St. Patrick’s Day became what it is today.

Let me explain.

The myth of America says it was founded upon the principle of religious freedom. Truth is: no one really wanted the Jews, the Catholics, or the Quakers for that matter. (Let’s not even talk about those pesky Hindus. Kidding, I'm kidding.)

Irish Catholics began arriving in numbers just after the War of 1812.

By the height of the potato famine in 1847 it seemed as if the island of Manhattan was going to sink from the weight of Irish immigrants flooding ashore.

You can visit the Irish Famine Memorial just north of the World Financial Center. It consists of an Irish cottage that was abandoned during the famine shipped to the shores of New York and set up on a platform overlooking the Hudson River facing the Statue of Liberty.

The Paddys were quite unloved and were depicted as belligerent drunks, thieves and un-American Papists waiting for word from the Pope to take over the country. 

They were arrested so often the police vans were called paddy wagons.  They were referred to as “Blacks turned inside out”. Newspaper illustrations usually pictured the Irish as little monkeys or big apes.

An interesting book that explains all of this is called How the Irish became white by Noel Ignatiev.

Ironically, this derogatory ethnic stereotyping is kept alive today in the mascot for America’s most prestigious Irish Catholic University-- Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish symbol.

In New York, the micks settled in a sprawling neighborhood called Little Ireland. You know that neighborhood today as Chinatown, Little Italy and Nolita.  There is very little left of Little Ireland other than a Chinese Restaurant on Pell Street still calledPell’s Dinty and a street called Kenmare named after a town in County Kerry (which, Don’t ya know once won the coveted title of Tidiest Town in Ireland.)

Another McRelic is the original St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Nolita now called Old St. Patrick’s Church ( 264 Mulberry Street.) It was the church the community defended in the movie  “Gangs of New York.” The scene depicted in the film was an actual historic event.

We can thank Oliver Cromwell for another historic event that was later played out on the streets of New York. In 1649 Cromwell invaded Ireland, performed a few sizeable massacres confiscated 40% of the land and gave it as back pay to his Protestant soldiers. And thus began “The Troubles.” Northern Ireland became home to the Protestant Orange Order, which marched (and still marches) through Belfast's Catholic neighborhoods every July 12th.  It was a reminder that in 1690 William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James.  It’d be kinda like if Boston Red Sox Fans marched through the Bronx each October chanting: Choke! Choke! Choke!

In the 1820’s Ulster immigrants brought the Orange Order to America and in an act sure to provoke violence, they marched through New York’s Catholic neighborhood chanting “Croppies Lie Down”.  This was the historical antecedent to the present day Neo-Nazis marching through Jewish neighborhoods under police protection.

The worst of these riots occurred in 1871 at 24^th Street and Eighth Ave. At that street corner soldiers guarding a small group of parading Orangemen fired volleys point blank into crowds of jeering Irish Catholics. Over 60 Irish-Catholics were killed.

(See illustration)

In addition, Anti-Catholic mobs like the Bowery Boys, (separate from the Orange Order) would march through Irish neighborhoods on St. Patrick’s Day carrying “Paddies” effigies of the Irish Patron Saint dressed in rags holding a whiskey bottle, wearing a string of potatoes or a necklace of codfish, mocking the Catholic custom of fasting.  

And thus the Irish became the Fighting Irish. They began to organize in self-defense. In 1836 they formed the Ancient Order of Hibernians.  (Hibernia is the Latin name for Ireland). The AOH would eventually field 3 thousand armed men in uniform.

ST. PATRICK”S CELEBRATION 

The first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in America was held in Boston in 1737. It seems to have been a small fund-raising dinner dance. But the Micks up in Boston love to mention it to the Paddys in New York.

THE PARADE

The world’s first St. Patrick’s day parade was held in New York City in 1761, when a contingent of Irish soldiers in the British Army paraded up Broadway. The parade continued to be held under the auspices of military organizations until 1812.

By 1853 the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) began to play a dominant role in the parade.  Now that they had a paramilitary organization, they needed a parade to strut their stuff. So the parade became kind of like the old May Day Parades in Moscow, a way to flaunt the size of the Irish martial might, an annual “Look how many men we have --don’t mess with us” reminder to the Protestant majority. It was no coincidence that the parade was held on Fifth Avenue not only the site of the new cathedral, but also the home of the ruling class. The parade soon became an opportunity for politicians to court the “Green Machine” the oh-so-important immigrant vote.

To this day the AOH still runs NY’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
The AOH remembers well the blood spilled on the sidewalks of New York, which is why there’s a distinct martial air to its parade. As opposed to -- say in Chicago -- where the parade is led by leprechauns on rollerblades followed by costumed characters dressed as the Honey Baked Bears, Monster Trucks from Rock Stations, double-decker buses with ads for Irish bars and lovely lassies handing out samples of Irish Spring soap. In New York a military regiment, NY's own Fighting 69th, always "steps off" to lead the parade.

The 256th St. Paddy's Day Parade will be held today on Fifth Avenue.  It begins at 11:00 am, and goes along from 44th uptown and then to over Third Ave, where there happen to be a few bars. There will be a live telecast of the 11:00am on NBC.

Aside from the parade, New York City also may have added one other important ingredient to the holiday.  If you asked for corned beef and cabbage in Ireland most folks will scratch their noggins.  The Irish ate and still eat something called Bacon and Cabbage, corned pork that looks and tastes very much like the corned beef you have at Katz’s deli.  I’ve read that Irish New Yorkers were introduced to corned beef by their Jewish neighbors on the Lower East Side. I’m not absolutely sure of this but it seems plausible. Or it could just be blarney with a slathering of schmaltz.

The songwriters of NY’s Tin Pan Alley ( 28^th Street between Broadway and 6^th Ave)also added some o’tunes to the party, writing such ditties as: When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral, Mother Machree and Little Bit of Heaven, Sure they call it Ireland. These sentimental songs were played in the Music Halls of the Bowery to entertain homesick Irish immigrants.

Another American addition to the Irish story is the happy go lucky leprechaun.

The Irish "lobaircin” were tiny little pissed off men whose job it was to mend the smelly shoes of all the other fairies. Walt Disney’s 1959 film DarbyO'Gill & the Little People, pictured them as a happy little loveable green smurfs. And this view of them has become dominant ever since.

America officially won the culture war in 1995 when the Irish Government began a national campaign to use St. Patrick's Day as an opportunity to generate tourism; they happily opened the alcohol floodgates and promoted a St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin. You can watch the Dublin parade live at 12:30 pm GMT, go to:www.tourismireland.com/stpatricksday

So in the end the 34.3 million Americans who claim Irish descent wound up influencing the O.G.’s (Original Greensters) --the 3.9 million Paddys they’d descended from.

To sum up:  we’ve taken some pagan traditions --shamrocks, sun worship and fairies and added them to Ireland’s most important Saint’s feast day -- then turned that into a celebration of Green Beer, Mc Donald’s Shamrock Shakes, a good deal of Sure and Begorra, some Lucky Leprechauns and quite a few inebriated teenagers wearing Kiss me I’m Irish buttons.

An estimated 93.3 million Americans say they plan to wear green today. Me--- I think I’ll just stay home in bed. 

And if you don’t like it you can, as they so sweetly say in Gaelic: 

Pòg mo thòin (pronounced Pug Ma hone) Translation: Kiss me keester.

Donal O’Siodhachain
(Daniel Sheehan)