St. Patrick's Day and Other Holidays by Bonnie Le Hamilton

In four days, it will be St. Patrick’s Day. I’m also informed, thanks to social media, that the holy periods of Lent and Ramadan are going on right now, with Palm Sunday on the 24^th and Easter on the 31^st.

All of this got me thinking about holiday traditions and which ones we, or our characters, follow. I know I have touched on traditions concerning big holidays like Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but what about the others?

I don’t know about schools today, but when I was a kid, St. Patrick’s Day was a big deal, mostly because of pinching anyone not wearing green. I have previously mentioned my cousin who was vicious with his pinches back then.

Anyway, on St. Patrick’s Day, I always try to remember to wear green.

In my husband’s family, their tradition was to have corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, which is something my family never did, but now I do it every year. This year as usual you will find me at my sister-in-law’s place having corned beef and cabbage.

When it comes to Ramadan, of course, we don’t celebrate that, but we also never celebrated Lent. Growing up, Lent was just lighting a candle on each of the four Sundays before Easter, and the one we lit on Easter was white while the rest were green.

I was an adult before I learned some people give up stuff during Lent, but that is as far as it goes for me. Now Easter is a big deal. It's as big as Christmas really. But even still, it isn’t like it was when we were kids and everyone showed up at church in their new spring outfits complete with hats, gloves, and little purses. I hated those hats.

We still dress up for Easter, but then we try to dress up for every Sabbath day. Easter is on Sunday.

Other Easter traditions are the Easter egg hunt and Easter baskets, and way too much candy!

In our church, it is more about reading about the Resurrection of Christ than all those treats, just like we try to make Christmas more about the birth of Christ. However, I admit it is harder to find décor about the Resurrection of Christ than it is to find décor depicting the birth of Christ. Explaining why I have so many Nativities and only one “He is Risen” knickknack. I wish I had more. Though I do have a couple Gethsemane statues. Gethsemane had to happen before the tomb could be found empty! That’s important too.

But what about in our stories? Do we ever use some of these holidays in them?

I know I have used April Fool’s Day at least once, which is the day after Easter this year, but I don’t think I’ve ever done much about St. Patrick’s Day. Have you?

As far as stories go, I know Blue Bloods usually does something about St. Patrick’s Day, but that is a bigger deal in New York or Chicago. Wasn’t it the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade that The Fugitive got lost in?

But how about in small-town America? What kind of things would they do?

I know we never had a parade on St. Patrick’s Day, but it is usually still pretty cold on St. Patrick’s Day, I’m surprised New York and Chicago have parades for it, then again, New York has their big parade on Thanksgiving every year, which is pretty darn cold.

Around here, it is normally a white Thanksgiving.

Though if you are making up a town, or using a small town that never did much for the holiday, what would that be?

Or would it be mentioned at all?

I’m sure in Sci-Fi the likelihood of them celebrating St. Patrick’s Day is pretty slim, the same in Fantasy, but what holidays would they celebrate? What would that look like? What is the tradition for it? Is the tradition different for separate groups?

I should consider this for my Sci-Fi because what sort of culture doesn’t have holidays? For my speculative fiction, I don’t think any of our holidays are mentioned specifically, but it does occur in late spring, right before high school graduation for some of the characters. And that is in the story.

But most of what I write is romance, and I have no idea why I don’t mention St. Patrick’s Day in any of them. I clearly could have in the one where I mention April Fool’s Day because the female lead’s little brothers would make a big deal out of that too! And I do not know why I didn’t at least mention it in passing.

Anyway, happy writing everyone! And Happy St. Patrick’s Day!