HERE we go again. The incorrigible failure to understand other people's passionately held beliefs seasonally asserts itself, yet regularly manages to catch us unawares. When we "are braced for the storm, it, does not erupt; when the seas look placid, we are suddenly hit by a tidal wave.
Drumcree and the Orange insurrection of last summer took most people by surprise; what was generally regarded by nationalists as a festival of bigotry was seen by unionists solely as an overdue assertion of oppressed rights and subverted identity. Are we capable of distancing ourselves ever so slightly from the seasonal emotions which propel us into such fevers?
This question is relevant now because the poppy is upon us again. Last November, Northern Ireland went through paroxysms of anger over the refusal of BBC news reader Donna Trainor to wear a poppy on screen. She said she would wear neither the poppy nor the shamrock, since they were seen as symbols of division in Northern Ireland.
The word that counts here is "seen". It is that use of the word which weakens her argument; because it means that other people's misinterpretation of what you do is an essential guide to your conduct. The veto of strangers becomes your own rule book of behaviour. But even that act of conciliation achieves little. For in Northern Ireland, and to a lesser degree in the Republic the act of doing nothing, of staying neutral, is seen as taking sides in one way or another - most especially in the matter of wearing vegetables of identity.
Enchanting Symbol
There can be no more honourable or enchanting symbol than the shamrock. It not merely is a reminder of the debt the Irish owe to an outsider - probably a Briton and of the deep power of Christianity on the life and lives of Ireland and the Irish; it is also a symbol widely used through both sections of the Irish people.
It is the symbol of the IRFU which straddles both traditions magnificently. It is in the badge of the RUC. It was in the emblems of the 36th Ulster Division. On the face of it, it should be a completely neutral symbol of Irishness, available equally to Orangemen and to nationalists.
But we know this is not so. Protestants in Northern Ireland are uneasy with the shamrock. For whatever reason, it reeks of Fenianism, of Taiguery, of the Pope. It is acceptable as an institutional emblem, intertwined with the harp or the crown; but, as a personal decoration, for many Protestants it is a threat.
It is Catholics in the North who wear shamrock and celebrate St Patrick, authentically, as their own. If you doubt it, try walking into a Shankill Road pub wearing shamrock on St Patrick's Day; but notify the local hospital of your bloodtype first. Better still, get measured for a suit; you'll wear it lust the once.
Should one capitulate to that grotesque misinterpretation of a truly blameless symbol? No, absolutely not. For the shamrock is not a symbol of triumph or of victory; it is an innocent expression of an innocent identity, unstained and unsullied. If other people have a problem with that, then that is other people's problem; one might have to be prudent in the company of their unreflective muscularity, but to allow their misunderstandings about the shamrock to influence what you wear in a television studio is simply absurd. There is no end to such capitulation.
Patently Obvious
Such remarks about the shamrock will be patently obvious to Irish nationalists. What will not be quite so obvious is that similar remarks can be made about the poppy. In its origins, it is quite blameless and a political, which is what makes it so different from the Easter Lily of republicans, which celebrates a violent political event. The poppy was born out of the carnage of the first World War; the day on which it is worn is not a day of victory, nor is the poppy an emblem of victory, but of a day of peace of war finally ended.
The reason for wearing the poppy was not to celebrate victory or war, but was like any flag day, a money raising process. In this case, to raise money for the care of the millions, who were maimed.
No doubt much of the language associated with Poppy Day irritates many nationalists. Irish people watch the ceremonies at the Cenotaph in London and find no echoing chord in their hearts; all that strut and grandeur, banners and flags. So British. So royal. So foreign.
But it is time to make the journey into another heart. People remember their losses in different ways; intensely ornate ceremonial is foreign to Irish habits and is mystifying to the Irish psyche. But merely because we have trouble empathising with such practices doesn't mean the motives behind them are not authentic. Britain's losses in war this century exceed one and a quarter million; is it surprising that such blood letting demands ceremonial, if only out of guilt, a desire to repay the unpayable?
Echoes of that British ceremonial are to be found in British Legion commemorations in the North. For many unionists, Armistice Day provides an opportunity to declare who they are. No doubt that understanding of the meaning of the poppy is shared by others from the opposite side, which is why the IRA blew up one Remembrance Sunday parade nine years ago and - conveniently forgotten by their apologists - tried to blow up another in a remote part of Fermanagh on the same day.
Sign of Remembrance
If I say the shamrock is a divisive emblem of republicanism, am I correct? No, I am not. Equally, the poppy is not an emblem of Britishness or of Orangeism, though some choose to make it so. As the historian Jane Leonard has shown, poppy sales in Dublin in the 1920s exceeded those in Belfast. The poppy is a sign of remembrance of the dead of the world wars and a means of supporting the living maimed.
The shamrock is a sign of Irishness and a memorial to the christianisation of Ireland. Only the intolerant misinterpret; and only fools bend their knee at the intolerance of others. To honour St Patrick and to remember the thousands of Irish dead of two world wars are not incompatible deeds: they are public and civilised professions of the complexity of our history.