Column: Mass in Irish, a strange Rubix cube, and being allowed to break Lent

It’s funny the things that stick in your mind, and the weird associations you develop as a result.

I can’t think of St Patrick’s Day without remembering an impossible Rubix Cube that I owned for years - up until relatively recently, in fact, when common sense finally prevailed and I consigned it to the recycling bin. 

I’d picked it up for a pound at the Belleek Market when I was a child, hence the association with St Patrick’s Day. 

It had scenes from that 1980s classic movie E.T. on every face and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. As was often the case on St Patrick’s Day, it was pound for punt (or should that be the other way around?) at Belleek Market, a treat of a day out between Mass and the parade.

The trouble with this particular Rubix Cube was that all the faces depicted very similar scenes. Each had a light blue background and a greyish brown E.T. 

And so unlike the original coloured square Rubix Cube that made it very clear which pieces were supposed to go together, mine was simply impossible. 

Even when, after several years of trying, I decided to take the stickers off and tried to piece them together like six little nine-piece jigsaw puzzles, it didn’t work. 

Ever the optimist, I kept it for years and it was only in a relatively recent clearout that I finally admitted defeat. It’s not something that comes easily to me!

That particular St Patrick’s Day no doubt took the same form as most others that I remember. If the shamrock hadn’t been uprooted the night before, it would have been gathered that morning, the roots wrapped in tinfoil, and pinned on to a coat collar. 

It was a big treat on St Patrick’s Day to wear my Irish dancing costume to Mass, and there would be dozens of the elaborately embroidered dresses dotted around the old St Mary’s Church in Killymard.

There was something a little bit magical about Mass being said in Irish one day per year. Our teacher Mrs Muldoon in Ballydevitt NS had us well prepared so that we could get through the basic responses - ‘a Thiarna déan trócaire, a Chríost déan trócaire, a Thiarna déan trócaire’ and the Ár nAthair.

When I got a little bit older I sang in the choir and the St Patrick’s Day hymns were always my favourite. They felt very celebratory and uplifting.

The big excitement of the day was the parade. And I must admit that for my much younger self, it wasn’t so much about seeing the floats and the marching bands and the fire engines - much as I enjoyed all of that. The really big deal was that on St Patrick’s Day, we were allowed to break Lent without fear of eternal damnation.

Self-discipline has never been my strong point but breaking Lent was unthinkable, mainly, I must admit, because of lack of opportunity. 

Living in the countryside, there wasn’t a shop to pop into to pick up a few penny sweets. And even if such an opportunity had ever arisen, I suspect that I might not have taken it for fear of being denounced from the altar. Ah, the innocence!

St Patrick’s Day and its special Lent-breaking dispensation was therefore approached with huge anticipation. We would talk about it at school, on the bus, after Mass. In which sugary delights would we indulge when the big day finally came around? What was the one treat that we were really missing above all else during our period of abstinence?

The debates raged - were crisps included in Lent? Did golf balls count? Because really, they were chewing gum so they shouldn’t be classed as sweets.

Some took the whole thing more seriously than others. I don’t think it will be any surprise to learn that I was in the ‘golf balls are chewing gum not sweets’ camp.

But still, when St Patrick’s Day arrived, going into Terry Woods shop in Donegal Town with my saved up pocket money was a great feeling. I have a particular memory of buying a KitKat and noticing for the first time that the words KitKat were embossed onto the chocolate. Another memory is of having my first sherbet dip in weeks and feeling like my tongue was going to explode from the sugar-citric sensation. 

And if Terry Woods, Paul’s or Peter Quinn’s shops hadn’t satisfied our cravings, there would be no end of sweets being thrown from the floats. Lollipops, Black Jacks, Fruit Salads and more were reached for frantically as the lorries, vintage cars and fire engines went by. 

It’s funny looking back now and thinking about how much excitement a few sweets added to the occasion. 

As a parent, I’ve seen the same thing with my own children when they were younger.

For some, St Patrick’s Day is about the pub. That side of our national feast day largely passed me by, mainly because I moved abroad when I was 18 and by the time I settled back  home I had started my family. 

When living in France, I once ran a marketing campaign around St Patrick’s week in a hotel I was working in at the time. Like Donegal, it was mainly busy in the tourist season and we were invited to put forward ideas to bring in more business in the off-season.

My Irish week went down a treat. Our drinks rep set me up with a Guinness keg, gas and tap for the week on a small bar that he used for trade fairs. 

We had Irish stew on the menu, scones on the breakfast and dessert buffets, Irish flag cocktails and Irish coffees on the drinks menus. 

We even set up a dart board and ran a few competitions to help create a pub vibe. 

It really livened up the hotel for the week, and led to a lot of local repeat business, so it was a success at every level and it bagged us an award within the hotel chain. 

It never ceases to amaze me how well Irish culture travels around the world. The recent Saturday Night Live Oscars sketch is a reminder that we are not always painted in a good light. But on the whole, we are well received and people enjoy many aspects of our culture that we ourselves sometimes take for granted.

Whether home or abroad, St Patrick’s Day is about celebrating our heritage, our Irishness, each in our own way. 

Whether you choose to go all out with face paints and shamrock earrings and green from head to toe, or you prefer to keep your distance from the festivities, I hope you manage to enjoy it in your own way. 

Beannachtaí Lá Fhéile Phádraig daoibh go léir.