When my son was in kindergarten, his wonderful teacher had a great way for the children to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
She took all of the last names of the boys and girls in his class and wrote them on shamrocks made of green construction paper and then as an added surprise, she added either “Mc” or “O'” in front of the names to make everyone feel they were Irish. Just to give you an idea, Smith would become McSmith or O’Smith. Then she taped the shamrocks to the front of the kindergarten entrance for the whole school to see!
There was always lots of laughter as the children made faces and dramatically said their new Irish names to each other and anyone else they happened to see.
I love a day dedicated to the celebration of all things Irish and St. Patrick’s day is definitely all about having a grand time.
To me, it’s also a day to pause, think about my peeps and take pride in my culture. It’s a culture rich in its ancient history and magical in its talents. We are artists, story tellers, dancers, singers, weavers of thoughts and ideas and a people who have a lot of pride in their simple roots. We Irish do have a way of looking at the world a little differently and there’s certainly a humorous or witty twist associated with our point of view.
And we always like to break the rules a bit and shake things up. Why be like everyone else?
No matter where you are in the world today, I hope you have a great St. Patrick’s Day and to get you in the mood and up and out of your seat, here’s a short clip from the internationally acclaimed theatrical show Riverdance celebrating the lyrical dance and music of Ireland. The video features the original Irish dancing champions, Michael Flatley and Jean Butler, who broke new ground by making Irish dancing sexy over twenty years ago when Riverdance was first introduced at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest.
This clip is the finale of the show and it runs a little over 6 minutes in length. No worries if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing. You can easily push it to 3:17 (get it?) for the beginning of my favorite part where the dancing begins on the steps.
Slainte!! (Cheers and good health in Gaelic)
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