How to celebrate St Patrick’s Day

How to celebrate St Patrick's Day

St Patrick’s Day: Never mind binge drinking & silly hats on March 17. Here are 10 mooky ways to celebrate the Day o’ the Irish, from baking green goodies to having a potato party.

If we’re going to celebrate an endearing stereotype, let’s do it right! Each year for St. Patrick’s day on March 17th, people everywhere throw on whatever green t-shirt they have handy in their closets and go out for a night of binge drinking with their mates. Here you’ll find 10 slightly different, and maybe more mooky friendly, ways to celebrate the Day o’ the Irish.

1) Dust off your very best St Patrick’s Day jokes

The best ever St Patricks Day joke is of course, this:

Q: What did St Patrick say when he drove all the snakes out of Ireland?

A: He said, “Are you alright in the back there, you snakes?”

2) Bake green goodies

Whether you’re heading out to a party and want to be everyone’s favourite person by rocking up with platefuls of yummy things – or you’re just spending the night indoors – nothing screams St Patrick like dyeing things green. Rivers and fountains all over the world get dyed green each year, but why stop at bodies of water?

Use green sprinkles instead of hundreds and thousands and make your own St Paddy’s fairy bread – or indeed leprechaun or seelie bread.

Drop green food dye into some frosting or cake mix and make St Paddy’s cupcakes, or shamrock sugar cookies.

Get inventive – green milkshakes, green pancakes, green beer – whatever.

Or make a lovely healthy salad in the green, white and orange hues of the Irish flag.

3) Dye your hair red

If the Irish have all the luck then give yourself Eires and graces with some semi-permanent red hair colour. Red suits pretty much everyone. Choose a shade that works for you (Are you titian, russet, ginger, auburn, plum or pillar box red?) and you’ll probably find yourself the subject of much flattering attention if you rock up at your local establishment on St. Patrick’s Day with flaming locks. You’ll have all those cute guys calling you Lass or Red and buying you drinks, and your friends will all be thoroughly impressed with your commitment to St Paddy himself. And, as they say, a hair change is as good as a patron saint’s holiday. Well, they almost say that.

4) Learn an Irish dance

Legs flying all over place, weirdycute costumes, thunderous rhythms, flushed joyous faces with twinkle-shining eyes – what’s not to love about an Irish folk dance, be it a jig or a storming riverdance? Search for an Irish jig on YouTube and watch it over and over again until you manage to keep track of what goes where. Study it, learn it, live it. Then get wasted, find a table top, and go nuts. You’ll be the life of the party, the belle of the bar. “Nobody mess with that chick, she’ll kick your eyes out!” they’ll say admiringly, and send a pint of guinness your way, on the house. You will of course knock it over with your crazy little legs as you kick around madly like an enraged goat – but ’tis the thought that counts.

5) Have a potato party

Potatoes are pretty much the main ingredient in the majority of the world’s best party foods – let’s face it, even the laziest host generally always at least has the decency to provide a cheap packet of potato chips (or crisps for you UK folk!), and who can resist that bowl of fries or wedges on the table? No-one, that’s who. As for alcohol, you know lots of vodka brands are distilled with potatoes, right? We cannot do without our potatoes. So throw a raging potato party and get everyone to bring their fave spud dish. Oh, and let’s not forget Irish potato bread! Nomnomnom. You are never going to find anything that goes quite so well with alcohol as the potato. In the Irish We Trust. And also tatties, of course.

6) Embrace Irish literature

Are you more the shy bookish type? Never fear, you have every right to have as enjoyable a time as the rest of the world. Hit up the library and borrow yourself a bounty in works by the best Irish authors, and there are actually quite a few. Never read any Yeats or James Joyce yet? Now is the time to start.

7) Have an Irish movie marathon

What better way to get your sexy Irish accent fix? Scour the internet and source out the best in Irish Cinema (I’ve even included a list from Rotten Tomatoes down in the links to save you some legwork.) By the way, if you haven’t seen the movie Once yet, you need to do it asap and this is the perfect time. It’s so beautiful and Dublin is so pretty and everyone is a musician and, um, did I mention the sexy accents already? Because, yeah. Yummy.

8) Get an Irish pen pal

The obvious downside to an Irish pen pal is that unless you’re email buddies and decide to call each other on Skype, you won’t get the benefit of hearing the accent. However, getting something in your mailbox (or your inbox) is a fantastic feeling, so why not find yourself an Irish pen pal who is studying the same thing as you or shares the same taste in television shows? It could be the start of something great. Ask them how they like to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day where they’re from! I’d advise against asking them if they know any leprechauns. If they don’t, they might think you’re a bit silly. If they do, they might prefer to tell you in person – that’s a secret best shared with only a few.

9) Spread the Irish saint love around

There are other Irish saints too, you know! If you find religion and mythology interesting then you will love delving into some of the cooler saints of Ireland.

St. Finbar, for instance, apparently stopped the sun setting for a fortnight when he carked it.

St. Kevin and St. Kieran used to rock out together performing crazy miracles.

St. Medana is best known for being a virgin. (How would you feel if YOU were best known for being a virgin?)

For pagans and wiccans, studying saints can be really interesting because a lot of them were actually Celtic gods and goddesses ‘hijacked’ by the church because they were just too cool to forsake and they wanted to keep them around to make conversion to Catholicism as easy and alluring as possible. Read up on St. Brigid (or should I say Brigid the goddess?) – she’s one of my favourite goddesses.

10) Hunt for four leaf clovers

I have never once found a four leaf clover, but then again I’ve never bothered to look on St. Patrick’s Day, and you’d imagine you’d have better luck then, wouldn’t you? An hour or two spent hunting in the comfy long grass will take you back to your childhood immediately.

11) Find someone Irish (or just a handsome ginger) and get your snog on

If you’re single (because we here at mooky like to encourage monogamy!) then make haste to your local Irish pub and suss out the crowd. The Irish are much more likely to be populating the Irish pubs and bars come St. Paddy’s, because, well, they’re sort of celebrities for those 24 hours, aren’t they? Everyone wants to share a drink with a real Irishman on the Day o’ The Irish but you can go one better (if you get in early) and share a kiss. Maybe they’ll show you what’s at the end of the rainbow 😉

St Patrick’s Day links