Bloomsday or St Patrick's Day?

I've never really seen the point of St Patrick's Day, despite having grown up in Belfast. The annual parade started in America and green Guinness was something you were more likely to find in New York's large collection of Irish pubs than actually in Ireland itself (thankfully). A sacred day for the religious then, or a big, boozy celebration for ex-pats; not anything really to do with Irish culture.

You can imagine my dismay, then, at opening the latest issue of The New Yorker to be confronted with an obvious St Patrick's Day marketing tie-in, a twee map of Ireland flagging up 'Bunratty Medieval Banquet' (never heard of it), Blarney Castle and no mention of the second largest city in Ireland, Belfast.

Detail from map produced by Tourism Ireland

Emerald green countryside is filled with fairies, horses and carts and a random giant teapot in an unrelenting vision of whimsy that conjures up Sean Hillen's work Irelantis. Having done a little digging I've discovered that this map is just one of three produced by Tourism Ireland and that Belfast has not actually gone the way of Atlantis and slipped into the sea, but the vision of Oirishness seems very much a piece with the cheesy commercialism of St Patrick's Day. Here's to Bloomsday on 16 June instead - a random celebration perhaps, but at least one that has literature and booze at its heart, rather than just booze.

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