St Patrick’s Day - A day to celebrate and question

This is the day we, or at least the great majority of us, declare and celebrate our pride in being Irish even if that happy possibility is occasioned more by an accident of birth rather than any particular achievements.

We will mark the national day at home, and at many, many points around the globe, by cheering marching bands, by participating in cultural events — some of which may involve a little cross dressing though certainly not in the New York parade. Irish tenors, or at least tenors asserting Irish descent, will sing maudlin songs of loss and separation at lunches in the great halls of America’s cities. The descendants of West Cork’s copper miners, who moved to Butte Montana generations ago, will celebrate with an abandon hardly equalled anywhere.

At home we will celebrate enthusiastically — as we always do. Some of us will drown the shamrock, many others will drown their sorrows. Others, the alone-at-home and aging parents of young emigrant families will use the day as an excuse to stay a little longer on Skype and catch up with almost virtual grandchildren living thousands of miles away in societies where the date is of little or no significance. But it was ever thus and it will, it seems, always be the reality for a diaspora nation like ours.