Every country has a national day, but not many countries have succeeded in exporting it. We don’t see the Scots celebrating Saint Andrew the golfer, or the Welsh parading in honor of my namesake Saint David on the streets of New York. Their dates are not in the calendar, and you won’t find them in the greeting card shop.
The English also have a national day, Saint George’s Day, April 23, but they are too modest to tell anybody about it. Saint Patrick’s Day – celebrated tomorrow but already thoroughly celebrated in advance – stands virtually unique and alone. Even if we have the misfortune not to be Irish we can’t ignore it, and we are not allowed to forget it.
I wondered whether the importance of St. Patrick’s Day in the national consciousness might be a matter of critical mass – the sheer numbers of people in America with Irish ancestry. But the statistics tell a different story. In the great century of immigration from 1820 to 1920, about four and a half million Irish people came here. During the same period almost exactly the same number of immigrants came from Italy, and the same from England. Substantially more came from the Russian Empire, and more than ten million immigrants came from the German and Austrian Empires. The biggest ethnic celebration in America should logically have a German rather than an Irish accent, but the Von Steuben Day Parade in September is relatively modest and has a far smaller place in the national consciousness.
But logic and statistics have nothing to do with these events. It’s all a matter of national pride, and in particular national character or, to put it another way, how much do you like a parade? If we look at New York’s calendar of parades we find that, up front after the Irish are the Greeks (who created theater in the first place), the Italians with a big parade honoring the bold but confused navigator from Genoa, the Puerto Ricans, the Poles and the Mexicans. Without a good parade, a national day is invisible. It’s the traffic jams that get everyone’s attention. This year New York will also host Chinese, Hindu, Philippine, Dominican, Nigerian and Korean parades, among many others.
The newer arrivals are beginning to celebrate themselves in the time-honored fashion. This is just fine with me. I rarely have to drive in New York City. But it may be the thin end of a very large wedge. Half a dozen national groups marching down Fifth Avenue on different dates may be manageable. But the new immigrants come from literally hundreds of countries, many of them with a tradition of parades. The traffic outlook is bleak.
It’s more than just the parades. We all have the duty to recognize and even embrace this kaleidoscope of nationalities in the name of social solidarity. I’m happy to accept that everyone must be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow, and I will be doing my best although I don’t expect to fool anybody. But I just can’t face the thought of pretending to be Russian, Pakistani, Columbian, Jamaican, Burmese, Dominican, and so on, as each national day comes around. It’s too much to ask. Let’s sink our national differences and just be Irish, all year round.
Copyright: David Bouchier
