Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick's Day

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day
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No pubs, no parades, no concerts – we’re in for another St. Patrick’s Day without any of the trimmings. But not to worry. If there’s one thing every folk song, Roddy Doyle novel and film about the fight for Irish independence have taught us, it’s that the Hibernian spirit doesn’t just overcome adversity, it thrives on it. In fact, if pubs, parades and concerts sum up all your past Paddy’s Day experiences, this could become your most authentic celebration of Ireland’s national holiday yet.

By Fiona Brutscher

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Brush Up On Your Irish History – If you’re new to being Irish, here’s a spoiler alert: times haven‘t always been rosy on the Emerald Isle. Read up on the ongoing celebrations surrounding the centenary of the republic or dive into Irish culture by taking a beginner’s language lesson.

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Go Green – Wearing green is a low-effort way to mark the occasion. Most people readily associate the colour with the Irish landscape’s famous 40 shades of green. In the Irish flag, green represents the majority republican population, orange symbolises the minority unionist population loyal to the British crown – and white represents the peace between the two groups in the new free state.

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Catch A Greening – Perhaps, dressed in green as you are, you can also witness the Global Greening somewhere nearby. Watching the Empire State Building, the Sydney Opera House or [insert local landmark] light up in green is a safe way to celebrate outdoors, perhaps even with a few friends if you keep a distance. If you must, indulge in green cupcakes, matcha lattes with green glitter shamrocks sprinkled on top or whatever other emerald kitsch takes your fancy. Just don’t put green food colouring in your beer, please! Show some respect. [Photo: Mike Young/Wikimedia Commons]

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Eat, Drink And Be Merry – Speaking of beer: We’ve already established that turning it green is not very Irish. Guinness, on the other hand, is. If you don’t fancy the original stout, the Dublin brewery has in recent years branched out to offer a wide range of beverages, including a brand-new alcohol-free one, so there should be something for anyone.

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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A Taste Of The Emerald Isle – As for food, corned beef and cabbage is, like so many things, an American invention. More traditional dishes (that can easily be cooked at home) include Irish stew, cottage pie and the famous full fry (which must include black or white pudding – good news, vegetarians: there are now veggie versions available). If you became a baker during lockdown, you could serve it with homemade Irish soda bread. Finally, treat yourself to an Irish coffee.

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Find Some Fairies – If your greatest disappointment is the cancellation of your local St. Patrick’s Day parade, perhaps the fact that such parades are not only a recent invention, but also an American one, may be a consolation. Instead, why not use the opportunity to get out of the house for some safe, socially distanced family fun? While it may be an overstatement to say the Irish all believe in fairies, the folklore surrounding them is still strong. If in doubt, most Irish people will avoid disturbing a fairy fort, just to be on the safe side. And who’s to say there aren’t some fairies living in a forest near you? Only one way to find out… You could set up the search for fairies like a scavenger hunt, ending with a homemade fairy door at the bottom of a tree. If that’s all a bit too esoteric for your liking, go “shamrock” hunting. You may not find a true shamrock, but any three- or four-leaf clover will suffice.

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Watch Some Irish Telly – Whether or not you’ve learned a bit of Irish today, tune in to TG4, the national broadcaster’s Irish-language channel. Most programmes are subtitled in English, and many are available to stream worldwide. From documentaries on politics, history and culture to contemporary music and sports, there’s truly something for everyone. For a festive feeling, bring a bit of céilí atmosphere to your living room with An Ríl Deal, a talent competition that showcases traditional Irish dancing, while also capturing the diversity of Ireland today.

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Get To Know The Man Himself – As Ireland and its diaspora becomes increasingly secularised, the religious roots of the national holiday lose relevance. But even for non-believers, they make for a great story. The National Gallery of Ireland’s website dissects an engraving showing the life of St. Patrick in great detail, explaining each scene depicted, as well as translating and explaining the Latin descriptions. The piece from the gallery’s collection depicts Ireland’s national saint as a pious man and shows him driving out the snakes, along with some other miraculous feats.

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Get Lyrical – Ireland has long prided itself on its poets. No writer captured a romanticised version of Ireland more effectively than W. B. Yeats. The National Library of Ireland offers a virtual tour of Yeats: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats. Once you’ve gotten to know the first Irish writer to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature, you could move on to someone more contemporary. Seamus Heaney, fellow Nobel laureate, was often cited in the past year, with a quote that makes for a great mantra as we look forward to brighter days ahead: “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere.”

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Celebrate With Cinema – Avoid the worst of the “Oirish” Hollywood rom-com genre, such as Leap Year, PS: I Love You, or the more recent, harshly derided Wild Mountain Thyme (hilariously dubbed “spudface” by writer Séamas O’Reilly). If you’re looking for a classic, The Quiet Man, while not exactly free of stereotypes, is not offensively cliché-ridden. For a cinematic history lesson, watch In the Name of the Father, The Wind that Shakes the Barley or Breakfast on Pluto. For a fun slice of life, choose The Commitments, Sing Street or Young Offenders. For the perpetual theme of immigration and emigration, Once, In America or Brooklyn fit the bill.

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day.
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Settle In For A Session – Wind down your festivities with some music. Other Voices is a concert series that has brought international superstars and many of Ireland’s most famous musicians to a small church on the Dingle Peninsula of the West Coast. Imelda May, Sinead O’Connor, Hozier, the Frames and Damien Rice – plus many other excellent Irish artists whose fame doesn’t (yet) extend beyond the island – have played there, and parts of their performances are available online. The live clips are interwoven with location footage and shots of the stunning surrounding landscape.

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Editor's Choice
Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Irish Food & Drink?
Everybody likes to raise a glass on St Patrick’s Day, but what do you know of true Irish culinary traditions? Take our quiz to find out

Quiz: What Percent Irish Are You?
"Kiss me, I'm Irish!" ...but are you? Take our quiz to see if you can claim you're from the Emerald Isle this St Patrick's Day

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Irish For A Day: How To Celebrate Irish Culture At Home This St. Patrick’s Day

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