wearin' o' the orange

As many friends and coworkers have chased me around the office this morning, trying to pinch me because I'm not wearing green, I offer this little history lesson:

Catholics wear green. Protestants wear orange.

In America, St. Patrick's Day is little more than an over-comercialized social event encouraged by alcohol manufacturers for the sole purpose of increasing consumption of their products and, thereby, increasing their profits. I've born witness to this phenomenon first-hand, as for most of the past 15 years I've spent every March 17th evening piping-for-hire in bars and taverns, where with every passing tune the drunks get drunker and the lewd get, well, "lewd-er." Everyone wears a "Kiss Me, I'm Irish for a Day" button, a plastic green derby, and consumes little gold-coin-wrapped chocolates from miniature pots of gold.

But in the lands of my ancestors -- Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland -- there is a much deeper significance to St. Patrick's Day. For centuries, there has been great social, political and religious strife in Ireland and Northern Ireland between the Roman Catholic majority and the Protestant minority. Ever since William III of England, Scotland and Ireland, a Protestant -- and better known to history as William of Orange -- defeated the Catholic King James II in the Battle of the Boyne (near Dublin) in 1690, the tension between Protestants and Catholics on the tiny island of Ireland has been fierce. Majority Catholics have fought in the highest halls of government to suppress the Protestant minority, and at times that Protestant minority has gained the upperhand and sought revenge. It is because of William of Orange (which actually refers to his home region in France) that the color orange came to represent the Protestants, and it continues to do so to this very day, right on the Irish flag.

I could write a lot more about the strife and tension between the Catholic and Protestant factions, but I really don't want to turn this blog into a history lecture. I would encourage those of you who want to know to search "St. Patrick's Day" through something like Wikipedia to read more about the history of the day, of the man himself, and of the centuries of conflict that have defined the tiny island nation of Ireland. You'll read about the green shamrock as a symbol of Catholic loyalty, and about the sectarianism of the "Orangemen." You'll see how both sides have their good points, their just causes, and their bad reputations. You'll understand that the times we live in may be less violent, but the tension is still real.

For my part, I'm not out to provoke anyone on either side of the issue -- on the contrary, I like to think that the white in the Irish flag symbolizes peace between the two factions. Rather, it is out of deference to my Protestant heritage and my Scottish ancestors who settled for a time in Northern Ireland that, on every March 17th, I wear orange.