Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!
‘Tis a day to honor Ireland’s most venerated and
holy saint by wearing green and drinking to excess. ‘Cause that’s just how we roll.
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| Slainte! |
And by “we,” I mean Irish-Americans. Or, rather, Americans, really of any descent.
Strangely, this is a tradition that doesn’t have much traction in other
countries, like, say, Ireland, where they insist on honoring this saint’s day
by, y’know, going to church.
Yes, St. Patrick’s Day, as we know it, is as
American as apple pie. (Maybe more. I have no idea how American apple pie really is.) The holiday as we know it in this country was created as a way
to express pride in Irish heritage, particularly at times when Irish immigrant
minorities in cities were not feeling the love from Anglo-Americans. (You may not know this, but the Irish and British
have not traditionally demonstrated much mutual respect toward each other. To say the least.)
Today, St. Patrick’s Day has been embraced by
Americans of Irish descent, or dubious Irish descent, and is accepted and even enjoyed by
Americans of any ancestry. Which is why
so many people across our country, myself included, will be sitting down to a
dinner of corned beef and cabbage.
So what the hell is corned beef, anyway?
Well, the first thing that corned beef is NOT is a
traditional Irish food.
Ireland has traditionally produced a good amount
of beef, including corned beef, which is something of a staple in British
cuisine, but the cows, the land they grazed on, and the meat they produced has,
until the last century, been owned largely by English land-owners, the meat
being exported to Britain, and too expensive for the majority of Irish to
afford.
No, corned beef entered the Irish culinary scene
only after huge numbers of poor Irish fled Ireland and landed on the East Coast
of the United States.
Corned beef, you see, is made from beef
brisket, a fairly tough cut of beef, deemed by most as inferior and therefore cheap. The trick with brisket is in the preparation.
One method involved either brining or salting the beef, often with different
spices, similar to pickling spices. Now,
“corn” is not what you think it is. The
word “corn” doesn’t refer to what we call corn (which is actually maize) but
rather refers to seeds, and was often used interchangeably with the word “grain.” Because of the seeds present in the pickling
or brining of the beef, it was referred to as “corned.” Thus, corned beef. Preparing it in this way, followed by
a long cooking time, usually boiled, because what the hell else did poor Irish
immigrants have to cook it in besides water, makes the meat much more delicious
than it would have been.
Corned beef is, therefore, not Irish food, but
rather immigrant food. This is likewise
why it shows up in the cuisine of other immigrants who came in large numbers to
American cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and
why corned beef and its smoked cousin pastrami are staples of any good Jewish
deli. Add in potatoes and cabbage, also
both cheap foods that you can make a lot out of, and you have the history of
poor immigrants and their struggle for both survival and identity in a foreign
land that largely hated them, all right there in one pot. Because they usually didn’t have more than
one pot.
What these early Irish immigrants did was no
different than what other immigrant groups, like Italians or Mexicans, have
also done, which is to take a fairly minor person or event, and conflate their
importance to that of a national figure, and in doing so help create a unified
cultural identity. By making a big deal
out of this one guy, they eventually got non-Irish and non-Catholics on board
with legitimizing this part of their culture.
It’s kind of what Americans have always done.
It doesn’t matter that St. Patrick wasn't Irish,
Columbus might not have been Italian, or Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s Independence Day. These are moments of culture unity,
that help us, as a nation, remember that this nation was founded by immigrants,
for immigrants. And we need to celebrate that
immigrant past even as we find a way to embrace the new cultures coming into
our country every day.
So here's to the Irish! Now sit back, relax, have some corned beef, and drink a
beer. (But please, don’t drink the green beer.)
And have a very happy Evacuation Day!
