Another one of those posts where I confess my befuddlement over activities that are purported to be worthwhile enough that people actually do them, and yes I know some things are just supposed to be fun.
St. Patrick’s Day. I don’t care. I know I should. Marty’s got a lot of Irish blood and I”ve got Scots-Irish. But I don’t care about St. Patrick’s Day. Marty doesn’t either.
I subscribe to the Homeschooling email newsletter from About.com. I have occasionally found some useful things through it but not so frequently that I think to look at it more than once every few months.
They sent out the St. Patrick’s Day issue and I thought I’d see what was provided.
There are lots of print-outs of leprechauns and rainbows and pots of gold to color in.
There are recipes. Blarney Stone-kissed Cookies (kissed because of Hershey’s Kisses used and an ad for Hersheys at the top of the page). A leprechaun pudding made of instant pistachio pudding, a green lollipop shamrock pin, St. Patrick’s day cupcakes that are colored green and have a rainbow and gold coins. Clover leaf rolls. Rainbow cookies. Green Kool-aid and green Jell-O snacks.
There are activities. A St. Patrick’s Day word search. St. Patrick’s Day word puzzles. Instructions on how to play “Lucky Leprechaun Says” instead of Simon Says. Pin the shamrock on the leprechaun.
There are craft projects where you make coin barettes, a leprechaun hat, a mouse face out of a shamrock, a shamrock hat, a shamrock napkin ring out of a toilet paper roll, a shamrock bird and then there’s the one where you paint the top of a jar with green craft paint and call it a St. Patrick’s candy container.
I suppose something is lacking in my genes. I’ve as much interest in sitting H.o.p. down with a St. Patrick’s word puzzle as I do in making a leprechaun pudding of instant pistachio pudding in a Glad zip bag. I think there is something very wrong in having children make shamrock napkin rings out of toilet paper holders. Certainly, a young child might be convinced by the adult that it is a worthwhile activity, and if H.o.p. was in school and came home with a shamrock toilet ring napkin holder for me I would ooh and aah and say oh, thank you H.o.p. that’s great, I love it, and I would because he’d made it and believed it was something I’d like. But he’s not in school with a teacher who might pass around toilet paper holders that will become napkin rings and I’m not going to say to him, “Hey, y’know what would be great? Let’s make shamrock napkin ring holders!” and make him believe it’s a worthwhile activity. And I certainly see no reason to do it in order to make believe we’re doing a homeschool project to put in the old portfolio to satisfy some academic arts and crafts requirement.
I’m befuddled and confused that humans even dream up things like this to do in the first place much less pass on to their children the sacred knowledge of the napkin ring. There are people who believe in napkin rings and there are people who make a living making napkin rings for those people. We’re not of either camp.
Now, see, I think it’s more interesting to sit down with H.o.p. and tell him that St. Patrick was purportedly an English or Scottish RC missionary to Ireland who shouldn’t have been in Ireland in the first place missionizing and that the legends attributed to him have earlier origins. I will show him some pictures of County Mayo from which the Kearns may have originated. Tell him the Hennesy folk may have come from County Offaly but who knows and the McNultys may have come from Donegal or Mayo or Roscommon where there is Rathcroghan.
I might read him this page on Croagh Patrick.
No, I will not be posting, in a couple of days, a photo of pistachio leprechaun pudding in a Glad bag. Trust me on that one.
H.o.p.’s dad’s great-grandparents and great-great grandparents, on his father’s side, were full-blooded Irish. The great-great-great grandparents were presumably full-blooded Irish as well, but they were left behind in Ireland and no knowledge was passed along about any of them. Not even the great-great grandparents or the great-grandparents or even the Irish side of his grandparents because his dad’s Protestant grandmother divorced her Irish Catholic husband after having 6 children, Marty’s father being the youngest one, and Marty’s father never knew his father and professed to never want to know him though other siblings did keep contact. He became Baptist while most of the others remained RC. As far as I’m aware, the only decidedly Irish thing that was kept, beside the genes, was some supposed jocular thing about the family being decidedly unlucky and any who married into it being doomed to be unlucky as well.
On my side I’ve got both Gaelic and Norse Scots-Irish, come over to America before the famines. Of the Clan Maccoinneach and Clan Macleod. But they’re not rightly Irish, I wouldn’t say, as they were in Ireland fairly briefly (comparatively) before skipping over to America. Except the Clan Maccoinneach is one of those, I believe, that went over to Scotland from Ireland way way way back when.
There are loads of Scots-Irish in America. They seem to have been very gungho about spreading the genes around.
For a hands-on Irish activity we could boil some potatoes and talk about what the Irish weren’t living on during the potato famines. Y’think?
I suppose hugging would be a hands-on Irish activity around here as well.
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