In light of St. Patrick’s day, here’s a list of information that will hopefully help you come to terms with, and then avoid, the American bastardisation of Irish culture. Spread the word!
It’s called St. Patrick’s Day. “Paddy’s Day” if you’re familiar with him. Not “Green Day”, “Shamrock Day”, “Irish Day”, and more-so than anything, it is not “Patty’s Day”. Calling it so makes you a moron, and no more.
Gaelic is not a language. Never was, isn’t, and never will be. We speak English or Irish. Not Gaelic.
Ireland is in IRELAND. Not in Britain, not in the UK, not in England. Ireland is an island called IRELAND.
Russia, Portugal, South Korea and Czech Republic are four of the fourteen countries that consume more alcohol than we do, per capita.*
Dropkick Murphys are not Irish. Liking them does not make you Irish. We never heard of them until tourists kept telling us how they’re their favourite “Irish” band.
Lived in America your whole life? Claim to be Irish? Yeah you’re probably not. It is next to impossible to travel through America and not have people tell you they’re Irish. “Oh really, let me see your Irish passport then”… “Oh no, my dad has red hair, you see”. NO! Just no. That is not how things work.
Just because you have a great great grandfather whose cousin had a dog who caught fleas off a rat that came over on an Irish boat all those years ago, that does not entitle you to say you’re “Irish”. We’ll let you away with it if a parent is genuinely Irish, and will tolerate the odd grandparent. After that… no!
The University of Notre Dame is racist. End of.
You, along with every American actor who has tried, cannot do an Irish accent. And if your name is Tom Cruise, this applies to you even more.
I have never met an Irish person who puts Guinness in stew. That is a thing we have kept in order to laugh at American tourists.
Ireland and Scotland are not the same. We’re not as fat as them.
We’re not a religious people anymore. As Dara Ó’ Briain says; "I don’t believe in god, I don’t go to church, I don’t pray, but y’know… I’m still Catholic".
As a tourist here in Ireland, wearing green pants does not make you “one of us” or “fit in” at all. You will notice this when you open your eyes and see that nobody else is wearing green pants.
We are not all related and we don’t all live on the same street. Asking if we’re related to Bono or friends with him (or any Irish person, for that matter) will result in scorn. Lots of scorn.
Leprechauns did exist. We over-worked them as slaves and they are now, as a result, extinct.
We do actually eat a lot of potatoes. You can have that one.
Funny seeing this getting notes again. Tumblr tells me I wrote this 3 years ago, early into my American career, probably the height of my frustrations with America's relationship with Ireland.
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