Day Fourteen: Heritage

I am Irish and I am proud.

Anyone who has seen me in the summer time knows just exactly how Irish I am. I go from white to crispy in about five minutes flat on a stormy day. I swear to god I’ve gotten a sunburn indoors before. It is just a fact of my existence that I have come to love and accept.

My whole family is Irish, and by proxy I have an incredibly large Irish family. This means that Christmas and Easter is a very busy time for us. Soon I will be writing the annual Christmas letter that gets sent to the four hundred relatives across the globe. As a big Irish family, we are very proud of our heritage and our lineage. We are also very, very good at getting drunk with little to no reason for celebration and even better at fighting once we are drunk.

Even though I am a Plastic Patty (Irish folk with three or more generations separating them from the Emerald Isle) I can still trace my roots all the way back to County Clare, and the St. Claire family on my mother’s side. My father’s side is a little harder since a lot of our documents were lost in the war, but we’re working on it.

 Heritage is incredibly important to everyone, or at least it should be. It tells you where you’re from, what your ancestors did in order to get to where you are today. When you learn about your heritage, you learn about the collective history of the world; learn about the part that your own bloodline has played in it.

Being Irish is a way of life. It explains the red hair, the blue eyes, the temper, the stubbornness, even the Catholic-ness of my family. Unlike the rest of my family who are genetically predisposed to alcoholism, I drew the DD for life stick by being alcohol intolerant. But what money I save on not buying drinks at the bar goes straight into my summer sunscreen fund.

 Challenge to my Readers:

Tell someone about your heritage today. Be proud of where you and your family come from. Put it on facebook, in the comments, on a postcard or a sign. However you do it, recognize that the past is part of your present.