Why you shouldn’t wear orange on St. Patrick’s Day

Thursday is St. Patrick’s Day, a religious holiday popularly secularized in America, that celebrates the feast day of Ireland’s patron saint. Traditionally here, those mostly derived from Irish ancestors, sport green-colored everything and use the day as an excuse to drink like sailors on shore leave and stand on street curbs watching enormous parades.

From time to time someone will decide to be cute, funny or defiant and wear a bright orange shirt because they know it will royally piss off Irish Catholics. Though most descended from Irish Catholic lines have forgotten why the color orange is such a sore spot, they have remembered enough to know that it’s a slap in the face.

You see, the Orange Order is a fraternal Protestant organization that has taken its name and color in honor of the Protestant King William of Orange, who in 1690 militarily deposed James II, the Catholic monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland.

The order played a part in the formation of Northern Ireland in 1920 as a Protestant-majority state. Since then, the Orangemen have been at odds with the IRA and its political arm Sinn Fein that is for ending British rule and uniting Northern Ireland with Ireland. Clearly, it is an anti-Catholic organization.

For those who don’t know, the Protestant British have caused years of untold suffering and division in Ireland. I won’t go into details because this isn’t a rant against England. I do however, think it is important for the Americans of Irish lineage to remember what their predecessors and kinsmen have endured.

True, the color orange is present in the Irish flag, but worn by itself, Orange represents something much more devious and hateful. Wearing an orange shirt on St. Patrick’s Day is almost the equivalent of wearing a pointy white hood on Martin Luther King Day. It’s not cute, it’s not being different, it’s something much, much more.