Irish Traditions Do Not Include Soda Bread, Corned Beef or Green Beads

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, a day that has emerged in America as one for eating Irish soda bread and corned beef and cabbage, drinking green beer and donning lots of green tchotchkes in celebration of “Irish traditions.”

You probably could discern that the tchotchkes are not a part of any Irish traditions, but if you’ve traveled to Ireland- a culture that is not all that different from our own- few of what Americans identify as Irish traditions are even recognizable to people in Ireland as cultural touchstones. I lived in Ireland in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and at that point, St. Patrick’s day wasn’t even really considered a day for partying or drinking or celebration or even really religious observance.

Still, the myth of corned beef and cabbage lives on, despite the fact that what we recognize as corned beef is nothing like what corned beef is in Ireland, and basically, corned beef is not Irish. So too would you be disappointed if you went to Ireland to seek out an authentic loaf of Irish soda bread- while in recent years more of these “Irish traditions” have been adopted in touristy areas to appease visiting Americans, the baked good is not even close to a staple in Ireland. One is far more likely to encounter the (much superior, I might add) ubiquitous loaf of “brown bread” in the wild in Ireland than a rye-and-raisin bedecked loaf of what Americans call Irish soda bread.

Do you observe any “Irish traditions” for St. Patrick’s Day?