When the saints go marching in

Sir, – I hope you will allow me to share with your readers an idea that I feel is sure to be a winner. It is in keeping with the spirit of our times, in which no aspect of our heritage is considered to have any value unless it has been monetised, made to pay its way, and delivered a profit for some cynic (in the Wildean sense of the term). I believe that if the immortal Myles were still writing, he would have pounced on this idea himself.

These thoughts have been stimulated by the addition of the new public holiday, in honour of Saint Brigid, to the Irish calendar. (Another winter holiday! If only we were located in the southern hemisphere!) Given the ever-lengthening duration of the festival associated with Saint Patrick’s Day, this newly freed date provides an unprecedented opportunity to go all out for a festival period without parallel in the world. We should join the two dates, and introduce a six-week joint festival, running from the beginning of February to the middle of March. It would celebrate our two patron saints, pleasing the women and the men and everyone. And it would allow for a prolonged carnival of the interpretation, reinterpretation, and rebuttal that seems to be the chief native growth industry. It might be called the Saint Baddy’s Festival, or the Saint Piddy’s Festival, and there would, no doubt, be the usual wrangles over that issue.

It has not escaped my notice that such an event would overlap each year, more or less, with the religious season of Lent. This would also be a point in its favour. The religiously inclined could enjoy the added significance that would attach to their chosen form of abstinence from its association with our two saints. Committed drinkers, on the other hand, who have traditionally allowed themselves a dispensation from the pledge on Saint Patrick’s day, could now, with a clear conscience, extend that dispensation to the entire duration of the overlap. – Yours, etc,

TERRY MOYLAN,