Saint Patrick’s Day gives you a chance to be an honorary Irish

A green-clad leprechaun may inform you that there are only two types of people in the world: Those who are Irish and those who wish they were. If you’re the latter, you get a wee chance today, Saint Patrick’s Day, to become an honorary Irish person, to partake of the “craic” (gossip, fun, or enjoyable conversation) and, if so moved, the Guinness, too.

St Patrick is the patron saint of the island of Ireland, the monk who supposedly cast out all the snakes from that emerald place (although there are probably still some lawyers and politicians…).

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The day has become a celebration of Irish culture and a chance to contemplate how a country managed to survive rapacious colonialism, crippling forced emigration and grinding poverty to become a modern European democratic state with one of the highest per capita Gross Domestic Products in the world.

Ironically, for a country whose millions of famine refugees found shelter all around the world, and whose people are known to be some of the most welcoming, there is rising xenophobia around economic migrants today in Ireland.

Today, though, will be about laughter and joy, inclusion, not exclusion. And perhaps an Irish blessing: May misfortune follow you all your life… and never catch up.

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