corr

So last night I pulled out my crinkled, butter stained, coated with crusty flour copy of my Irish soda bread recipe. I tell myself I don’t need to look at it – but inevitably I forget something at the grocery store – like eggs or buttermilk. Eggs and buttermilk I will need for Saturday when I make soda bread for our annual Brennan dinner.

Aside from the fact I actually enjoy soda bread, I like this annual ritual I’ve created for myself. Just a glance at the recipe, I need not go back. I know how to hand mix the flour and butter to the perfect flaky consistency. I imagine as I coat the raisins just slightly and fold in the eggs that I am somehow recreating a ritual of one of my Irish forebears, proving my empathy and pride in my heritage.

But that’s a lot of bollocks, isn’t it? I mean… even if I am blending the butter with my hands and not a mixer, I am using my Pampered Chef batter bowl, my gas powered stove, all while contemplating the indulgence what consuming this butter rich loaf of bread will do to my daily caloric intake. I don’t think any women in my Irish family tree had those luxuries of the modern world… if they were even the sort to knead out a loaf of bread. Some of those branches of my ancestral tree are a little… ragamuffin.

Indeed, I have a few philanderers and abusers hanging out in those branches. People that I’m not entirely certain I would want to spend a great deal of time knowing today… much less celebrating. And yet… isn’t the main form of celebrating this Irish heritage on Saturday the massive consumption of alcohol, a pretty active spark to those fires of abuse and philandering?

Not to mention it’s adoration of an immigrant class, right? The lazy, lacking in work ethic, Papal worshipping Irish? And yet… a century and a half later everyone wants to be them. By replicating their drunkenness and gluttony. Of all the things and reasons to celebrate our non-American-ness, it seems kind of twisted… especially if it there isn’t a leaf of a shamrock on one's family tree.

I get the historical context of the day’s indulgences. That it was a forgiveness of Lenten sacrifice. A chance in the midst of a poor depressed, potato famine starved life to find some temporary distraction… however irresponsible. And I get that we still need those escapes today. I just find it one of those perplexing choices of present day culture. That we condemn immigrants in our society, using a lot of the same slurs about work ethic, stealing money from the system, and doing some sort of narcotic. But we spend a day -  a week - more commemorating those trademarks of humanity today.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m still making that bread. And I’m still making the Guinness whiskey cupcakes. And I will probably drink some of that whiskey on Saturday, too. It is part of my present family tree tradition. Every year we gather in a party that is almost as full as Christmas… and the closest my family celebrations ever get to a cast party. So I get the fun and value of present mirth.

It’s just… I don’t know… corr.