In Our Green Era
The Academy might’ve snubbed Wicked for Best Picture this year, but we don’t need no stinkin’ Oscar—our own Emerald City always wins.
Elphaba would feel right at home in Savannah as these brick roads unfurl into fifty shades of green and more this week. Really, the revelry began on the first of the month, the professional party people shrugging off the Ides of March to start the shenanigans.
Oh yea, it’s as verdant as a Caesar salad out there, and history dictates that even the least Irish—or Roman, if we’re sticking with the tyrannical salad metaphor—among us cannot resist the es tu, Brutus force of cultural momentum. (Speaking of emperors, whether our current one meets the same fate, we can only hope.)
But let’s Dropkick Murphy aside politics for a moment. Except for that time the Secret Service circus came to town, St. Patrick’s Day—which takes place on Monday, March 17, for all ye not rockin’ a shillelagh—is a powerful unifier around here. Red and blue dissolve into a green slurry of festive costumery, reconstituted Irish whiskey, and whatever else drains to the sewers as folks gather to celebrate Savannah’s Irish heritage.
As we ought: The city owes much to its Irish ancestors, the hard-working immigrants who dug canals and laid railroads alongside the enslaved to help build a diverse, prosperous Southern city. Many fought against their former King’s Men in the American Revolution, and those Hibernian Society fellas might be wearing redcoats instead of those natty green jackets if Irish son Sergeant William Jasper hadn’t helped fight off the King’s Men in the Siege of Savannah.
It is a formidable legacy, which we proudly honor each year by inviting a million of our closest friends to party until their faces melt off.
(Over the decades I have written many, many columns about St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah, and I may have slightly plagiarized myself in the above paragraph. Sometimes a lass has to recycle jokes. And recycling is as green as it gets, OK?)
For those of you for whom erin go bragh is a mere suggestion rather than a roaring imperative, it is difficult to overstate the level of extra that is St. Patrick's Day in Savannah.
It’s as if Mardi Gras and your drunk uncle had a baby and dressed it in a shamrock diaper and tiny buck shoes.
Or a horde of leprechauns rode into your living room a Budweiser Clydesdale singing “Danny Boy” in seven-part harmony and puked corned beef and cabbage on the carpet.
It is wild abandon teetering on high heels about to go ass-up on the cobblestones. It is cackling uproariously with someone whose Tesla you would key tomorrow.
It is a shitfaced gyre of chaotic good that probably only avoids total savage pandemonium because of all the sweet old Catholic ladies who pray at Cathedral of St. John the Baptist that morning.
Let us not discount the miraculous City of Savannah and its superhero staff, who not only keep the hordes safe and secure but have the whole place spiffed up like it never happened within hours—a feat of planning and execution that obviously employs some kind of green wizardry.
Hotels are booked months in advance. School is cancelled. Dads camp out for days in the squares to claim their spot on the parade route (looking at you, Harrison Scott Key).
Though my own children are currently enrolled elsewhere, they are literally skipping college and medical school to come home for St. Patrick’s Day, which as a Jewish mother I must point out they don’t even do for Rosh Hashanah.
Honestly, how can I blame them? They were raised to believe that bagpipe sweat runs in their veins, and the family tradition of lunching with Ruchi and the gang at The Chatham Club feels as sacred as any ancestral ritual. At least no one will be sneaking my Bloody Marys anymore since everyone is finally legal.
It’s no wonder why lil’ Savannah has evolved to host the second largest St. Patrick’s Day donnybrook in the country. No matter how Irish you are or aren’t, our merry ol’ Land of Oz invites everyone to embrace its traditions new and old, from the Savannah Slithering that lights up Starland to the Greening of the Forsyth Fountain to the main event featuring New York firefighters marching proudly alongside wasted Alee Shriners whizzing around in their tiny cars.
Of course, there are plenty of other events marking our green era. Lesser known and far less welcome is the Pollening of the Puddles, which after the weekend’s rainstorms has powder coated everyone’s cars and sinuses in chartreuse. Stock up on your allergy meds, friends.
There is also the Tybee Island Irish Heritage Parade Saturday afternoon, March 15, a smaller but no less mighty version of its city counterpart, and though much shorter by several hours, no less drunken. You can catch me sauntering with the Tybee Island Marine Science Center team as we shell out flyers and candy for the Turtle Trot 5K Beach Run on April 26—register now!
(For real, is there anything greener than saving sea turtles? If you really want to help us raise funds for a much-needed beach utility vehicle for upcoming turtle nesting season, you can find sponsorship information here. If you really, really want to support TIMSC, please join us at the Ghost Pirates hockey game on Thursday, March 20—buy tickets at this dedicated link!)
Be it in Savannah or beyond, may the road rise up to meet all y’all this St. Patrick’s season, and not because you’ve tripped and landed on your face.
And in this time of wannabe wizards and incompetent emperors, may we find solace and hope in tradition—as long as it’s not a Roman salute.
Can I get a couple of tra-la-las? ~ JLL
I love the cheerfulness of your posts. It makes me envious of celebration that I will be missing this year --there is always next year. On the topic, however, I had a roommate (obviously many years ago) who refused to celebrate the holiday, instead "honoring Ostara, the Spring Equinox." She very proudly proclaimed that before the Church stole the day, it was a Pagan holiday celebrating nature's rebirth. My only response was, "yeah, but did they drink green beer?" Youth.
Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral to you Miss Jessica. I no longer attend the celebration but marched in several of the parades. I do miss watching it from the paper's location on Bay St.