Well, my family is Lutheran ... Protestant. As it turns out, my dad wasn't just telling us we should wear orange on some strange whim. His reasons were based in history.
The Irish flag is made up of 3 colors: green, white, and orange. This is no coincidence. Green represents the Catholics. Orange represents the Protestants.Why orange? The first British king of Ireland was William of Orange (a place name, not a color). Britain came to represent Protestantism in a country overwhelmingly Catholic, thus orange (the color, based on William's name) came to represent Protestantism. This article does a great job of explaining green vs. orange and its history.
As for me, I'm not Irish, and, although I'm Protestant not Catholic, I've worn both colors (not at the same time!) on St. Patrick's Day in the past, but today I'll probably wear neither. However, we are having corned beef and cabbage and Irish soda bread tonight!
I remember in high school several of the kids would wear orange on St. Patrick's Day! So I did know about the difference. I'm not Catholic, but green is my favorite color, so I like the excuse to wear green anyway! Also, Ireland is known as The Emerald Isle, so I just consider green to be an appropriate color for the day. (Oh, and I'm not really Irish either!)
ReplyDeleteThat was very interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I didn't know any of that. Hope you enjoyed your corned beef and cabbage. We enjoyed ours.. and will enjoy it again for lunch today. ;-) YUM!!!
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