St. Patrick's Day: A Short History and Until Next Year

St. Patrick’s Day- In my oppinion one of the very most important holidays of the year. Yes I feel grateful on thanksgiving and I get the spirit of Christmas and Easter (despite their misplacements on the calnedar). But in the long run I think that these holidays are more about reflection and appreciation than celebrating. This is in no way intended to undermine the history that brings us to celebrate St. Pat’s (witholding prodestant commetary here), and is certainly not meant to take advantage of the fact that "everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s day" but I am a little Irish, and my honey’s VERY Irish and well, we’re proud. All in all St. Patrick’s Day is the one day of the year where I truley feel like celebrating. Just feeling great.
The first photograph of Keith and I together was taken on St. Patrick’s Day 2005. Flash back to the day before: McCann and I needed something green to wear, and of course we did everything together so finding ourselves some green duds would be no exception. Well we did and we found a couple of beers afterword and I found myself back from where I had been gone for years. Flash forward again:

Veronica Pepper took this first photo of us and and suddenly everyone that cared about us knew. So, in some ways, St. Pat’s is an aniversary of sorts. (Thank You to Veronica, photpgrapher extraordinaire, this pic is one of my favorite things in the whole world!)
Since then, each year, we look forward to celbrating St Patrick’s Day. Great friends, great food, great beer. We especially look forward to celbrating with the Peppers. This time around we had a whole year of great plans, but life kicked in. John and Veronica and I all had to work on 3/17 and 3/18. More importantly they work early and I work late, so no amount of toughing out was gonna make our plan possible.
Keith had planned on cooking his traditional Irish spread for he and I anyway. Corned Beef and Cabbage, Colecanon, Guinness Lamb Stew and Soda Bread. Long story short, some of our friends were able to join our late meal, and we were grateful for it.
Next year, things will go as planned. Old traditions and new one’s will be combined. The gang will ALL be there. And we will all celebrate.