Erin Go Bragh

I administered a vicious pinch to one of my roommates at lunch last Thursday.

“Ow!” he said. “What was that for?”

“You’re not wearing green,” I said.

“No, this stripe in my shirt is green,” he said—it was blue—“and St. Patrick’s Day is a stupid holiday, anyway. I don’t understand it. You just drink and wear green.”

“Exactly. What holiday could be better for college students? We’re celebrating our Irish heritage. It’s so inclusive. It’s an awesome holiday.” As I myself am 1/32 Irish, I pinched him again.

Between classes last Thursday, the Yard was a sea of green—green sweatshirts, green scarves, green shoulder bags. It suggested a sort of ragged solidarity, like that of a low-budget revolutionary army. It was pleasant to think of people wearing green all over America, a huge organic flash mob; it was pleasant to think of millions of people waking up and rifling through their closets to find something green to wear.

Thursday night, we went to Winthrop House’s St. Patrick’s Day-themed Stein Club, featuring Irish music, Guinness, and troublingly green Bud Light. “Could I put some sugar in this?” a roommate asked, grimacing over her Guinness. (She compromised by adding Kahlua.) It was noisy and festive. Orange, white, and green crepe paper twined around the mantle and the doorway. People step-danced with more enthusiasm than rhythm. HoCo members squeezed vials of food coloring into the beer.

It is odd and lovely that so unpromising a holiday—one that is meant to honor a Catholic saint, one that has come to honor a particular nationality—should prove so unifying. Part of the appeal is that it demands little of participants, other than wearing green and drinking; there are none of the expectations associated with Valentine’s Day, none of the vaguely patriotic obligations that cling to the Fourth of July, none of the gift-buying, and little of the overt religious trappings of Christmas.

But part of St. Patrick’s Day’s appeal is, I think, that while it demands little of participants it offers the feeling of community. We wouldn’t, after all, comb our closet for green clothes if everybody else weren’t doing the same thing. We wouldn’t—well, at least my roommate wouldn’t—drink Guinness, unless spurred to do so by a vague feeling of celebration. There is a deeply human compulsion to gather and to celebrate; in our more or less secular society, it has insufficient outlet. At Harvard, where we are frequently trapped by our self-involvement, the problem is particularly acute. Good parties and concerts sometimes crystallize into a sort of communal joy, but the phenomenon is rare. On St. Patrick’s Day, though, the various greens brightening the Yard made it feel as though we’d overcome a little of our self-involvement. On St. Patrick’s Day, we become a high school history book writer’s vision of America: united, reveling in our diverse heritage.

Several friends and I plan to go to Costa Rica over spring break; as we tried to sketch out our itinerary, a friend complained that it would be Good Friday when we arrived, which, he felt, would limit our evening plans.

“I was talking to some people there, and nothing will be going on in San Jose. Everybody will be out of the city and, I don’t know, partying on the beach.”

We tried, with limited success, to explain that in many Catholic countries Good Friday was a somber day, during which people will be in church—“It’s like the Christian Yom Kippur.” I don’t think, though, that he understood; it was difficult to convey the idea of a sober, purely religious holiday, when we are so accustomed to secular ones. And I guess I could see where he was coming from: it’s pleasant to imagine Costa Ricans heading, en masse, to the beach, pleasant to think that you could arrive at a place and find a celebration underway, everyone, by mutual, tacit consent, already having a good time, all together, drinking, wearing the same color, happy.

Phoebe Kosman ’05 is a history and literature concentrator in Winthrop House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.