March 14, 2008
View From Lodi, CA: St. Joseph’s Day—Mostly Forgotten In America
By Joe Guzzardi
Time to wear the green, kiss
someone who claims to be
Irish (but may not be), dress like a leprechaun or
parade down
New York’s Fifth Avenue.
For those fortunate enough to live
in
Ireland, where the party goes on for five days,
you’ll be one of a million people celebrating
St. Patrick’s Day. Among the spectacles will be
marching bands, street theater, a treasure hunt and
family carnivals.
I’m a big fan of the annual bash.
When
I lived in New York, the parade ended precisely in
front of my 86th Street apartment.
Fortuitously, I owned
two Irish Setters, a male I called Paddy Boy and a
female, Corkie, named after
Ireland’s county.
When the marchers disbanded,
the dogs and I followed them straight into the pubs.
Once inside, I introduced Paddy and Corkie to the
bartenders. From that moment on, I drank for free while
they noshed on bits of corn beef that the totally
inebriated patrons slipped to them.
Those Irish Setters really knew how
to play the crowd!
But although I enjoy the Irish
madness, I have never understood why a much more
prominent holy man, St. Joseph, doesn’t get equal
billing.
St. Joseph’s
feast day, on March 19th, passes by each
year with hardly a mention.
I’m not advocating that St.
Joseph’s day should set off a full-blown party. But, at
least, it shouldn’t go by virtually unnoticed as it does
in America.
Line the two saint’s biographies up
side-by-side and you’ll quickly see that Joseph played a
more important role in Roman Catholic Church history
than Patrick.
Although he is acknowledged as the
patron saint of Ireland, Patrick was actually born in
Scotland. And the event for which he is most famous,
expelling the snakes from Ireland, is fiction.
Patrick is also said to have been
the first Christian in Ireland. This claim is also
false, although he did force the Druids to abandon their
pagan ways and baptized their warrior chief.
But, if you’ll forgive the analogy,
this is
thin gruel compared to Joseph’s life history.
Born in
Bethlehem and settled in Nazareth, Joseph eventually
married Mary, the mother of God. The couple returned to
Bethlehem where
Joseph watched over Mary until
Jesus was born.
Joseph, the carpenters’ patron
saint and the guardian of the Church, is frequently
described as having been “a tireless worker” and
“a just man.”
Unlike the spirited celebrations in Ireland for St.
Patrick,
St. Joseph's Day in Italy (and especially in Sicily)
is a subdued, almost solemn occasion. According to
tradition, huge banquet tables, called
St. Joseph’s Table, are set out in public for the
poor so that they can eat as much as they want.
Special foods, flowers and linens are provided each
year with every one of means in the village
contributing. The display is set around a statue of St.
Joseph holding the baby Jesus and surrounded by votive
candles.
Of course, I come to the question of Patrick versus
Joseph driven by an agenda.
I’m an
Italian named Joseph, the first born to
my father Giuseppe. My son is also
Joseph.
Perhaps what dooms St. Joseph’s Day to second-class
status is that one of its most important traditions is
baking and serving the famous loaf shaped like a
scepter.
Competing with green beer is tough. Maybe if we
Italians replaced bread with
cannoli as the most prominent symbol of our feast,
we’d get more attention.
Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English
at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly
column since 1988. It currently appears in the
Lodi News-Sentinel.
