A bunch of years ago, when I was on an extended job in the UK, I was asked to accompany a young woman that I worked with to a girls' prep school to talk about atypical careers for women, or some such. It happened to be St Patrick's Day, which is not a 'major holiday' in the States, unless you happen to be Irish or live in Boston or Chicago or something like that. Mostly, it's an opportunity for many of the States to drunk too much (green beer or Irish Whiskey), sing bawdy songs, and eat corned beef and cabbage and belch. (Apologies to any for whom this is a major/serious/meaningful holiday.)
In any case, I was pretty clueless about the importance of the day and the importance of wearing the green, etc. I had only the wardrobe I brought with me for this month-long stay, so I rummaged through my suitcase, and found my least-wrinkled, most-reputable outfit, and put it on. It happened to be a silk-linen pantsuit that was orange-sherbet-colored.
I felt like my reception at the girls' school was a little stiff and stilted, but just assumed it was because I was a 'yank' and obviously not of their social standing or class, and thought nothing much of it. It wasn't until we were headed back to the office that the young woman who asked me to accompany her asked me if I had worn orange on purpose on St Patrick's Day. My naive reply was, "no, why?" She then informed me of a little bit of the history (as she had understood it) of the holiday, and the long-standing dissention between the Northern Irish Catholics and the Northern Irish Protestants.
In reading a little of the history of Ireland, it seems that Patrick went to Ireland well before there were Catholics or Protestants. He went to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. And that's another story all together.
There's so much that we don't know, even when we think we do, and so many ways we are unconsciously unaware. It's not a bad thing. It just is.
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