The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #89855 Message #1697713
Posted By: GUEST
19-Mar-06 - 10:10 AM
Thread Name: BS: Wearin' O' the Orange on Paddy's Day
Subject: RE: BS: Wearin' O' the Orange on Paddy's Day
Posters are responding to the war between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland over which side will rule the land.
I'm talking about an American custom of wearing orange on St. Patrick's Day.
Do any American posters here, who seem to know so much about the Irish American history of the day, know what that custom is about in the US? As recently as two years ago, I sat and listened to a school librarian tell a library full of children that in her family, they all wore orange on St Patrick's Day, and claimed it was "all in good fun". Her high school students called her on it, claiming she was being outrageously bigoted.
So what gives with this time honored American tradition?