velvetpage | Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Eleven years ago, I was on exchange in a small town in Lorraine, in eastern France. It was near the border of Alsace, which had a significant Protestant population, but this town had always been French and as a result was very, very Catholic. There were not enough Protestants in town to have a service every week, and half of those there were, spoke Alsatian at home. The person who ran the services was a German teacher and an Alsatian. Most of the time, I figured out what passage she was reading and followed along in English, because my German isn't good enough for that.

Anyway, in France, there are birthdays and there are saint days. It doesn't really matter if you're Catholic or not. Almost everyone has a saint day. It wasn't too long ago that there was still a law on the books, stating that children had to be named "Christian" names - read, Catholic names. No choice, there. So even the kids whose names were given after that law had mostly chosen a saint day to go with the name they had.

I discovered quite quickly that there is no Saint Erin on the books. I found myself constantly explaining the origin of my name. ("You're named for an ISLAND? I must have understood you wrong. No one names their kids for islands.") By the time I'd been there a month, I was looking for a Saint Day to adopt, just for the purposes of having an extra birthday.

It came down to two choices, really. If I went with my first name, I decided to celebrate on March 17th, because it was the national saint day of the island I was named for. However, unlike most of the French kids I met, I had a middle name. When I told them what that was, they made my decision for me. My saint day became November 25 - St. Katherine's Day. My middle name is Kathleen.

So I had a nice little celebration, very like a birthday without candles, on November 25th with the host family I was living with at the time. (Their daughter had a non-saintly name, Carine, and she adopted the same saint day. Since she was away in America while I was there, they were missing her.)

Then, a few months later, having changed families twice, I found myself in a family with five kids under the age of ten. Not surprisingly, they were very Catholic. Upon explanations of my two possible Saint Days, they decided to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with me.

So there you have it, folks. I'm celebrating a Saint Day, though I'm not Catholic and this is not my name; a national holiday for a nation I do not belong to and in fact have next to no heritage from; and an excuse to wear green and sing my favourite songs, all at once.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.