The other day at HyVee my daughter Ruth was gazing covetously at a cheap string of green beads. They could easily have been leftovers from Mardi Gras were it not for the two pendants dangling from each. One was a little plastic shot glass, the other a plastic shamrock that proclaimed: “Irish for a Day.” I sighed. It’s St. Patrick’s Day in the 21st century.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not quite half Irish and I’ve drunk more than my fair share of toasts in the name of the saint. However, it reminded me of the time when Ruth was four and told me that they had been learning about St. Patrick that afternoon in preschool.

Curious, I asked her who they said this Patrick was. Confidently, she said, “He’s a little green man who plays tricks on people.” That’s right. The patron saint of Ireland had become the Lucky Charms guy.

No, I explained, Patrick was an ordinary man. He built churches in Ireland. No green suits. No pot-o’-gold. No, he didn’t even drive the snakes off the island. Just built churches. That’s all.

Patrick’s work more important than we realize
That’s all? Ordinary man? At 15, Patrick was kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery to Irish pagans. He spent six years virtually alone, watching his master’s cattle. In a dream, he was told to run away and seek a ship to take him back to Britain.

He walked 200 miles to the East Coast of the island. There, he asked the crew of another pirate ship to take him home. Miraculously, they did. But almost immediately he began to have dreams calling him back to the Irish.

After some months or years of preparation, he returned and within his lifetime converted virtually the entire island to Christianity. Briefly, Ireland became a center of Christian learning and culture.

However, within a few centuries the island was conquered by the same Norman French that conquered England and would remain a subject nation for another 800 years. The English overlords dismissed the natives as illiterate drunkards and thieves.

Irish enrich our nation
During the Great Famines of the 1840s when a million of them came to America, it was much the same. Everywhere, signs in shop windows read: “Irish not welcome,” or “Irish need not apply.”

So, they took the jobs no one else would take. Cops, firefighters, coal miners, athletes, gangsters, railroad workers. Their stigma was gradually lost and largely forgotten in the face of new waves of immigrants to discriminate against.

But their sons and daughters refused to forget. They organized parades. They wore the green. They continued to march (and yes, drink and fight) with the belligerent stubbornness of an oppressed but proud underclass. They unknowingly were blazing a trail for other persecuted peoples of this nation to follow. And still they march.

When doors close to any of us whatever our ancestry, we are Irish. When people tell us we’re not welcome whatever our difference, we are Irish. It isn’t in our hair color or skin hue, religious belief or sexual orientation.

It’s in our hearts. It doesn’t matter whether we’re 100 percent County Clare or can’t tell the difference between a shillelagh and a shamrock. We aren’t just “Irish for a Day. Pass the beer.”