How Ireland perfected the journey from abstinent Lent to the celebratory feast of Easter.
Throughout the history of Western civilization, spring’s arrival was always a time for feasting and gaiety. After months of cold stormy weather, long nights and gloomy days, shoots of new grass would herald the onset of another year’s planting cycle. In pre-Christian Ireland, the spring … [Read more...] about Sláinte!
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Sláinte! Wine: Another Irish Triumph
The legacy of the Celts in Ireland and how, in the absence of grapes, they used their wine making skills to create a honey-wine. Odds are, you’re familiar with the fact that beer, stout and whiskey have been mainstays of Celtic culture for eons. What I’ll bet you don’t know is that the Celts also played a key role in the development of humanity’s fascination with wine. Not … [Read more...] about Sláinte! Wine: Another Irish Triumph
Slainté! New Year – A Time of Big Portions
Edythe Preet, Irish America columnist, Jan 2012
Who needs Hocus Pocus when we have global positioning satellite systems, cell phones, iPods, and full-body airport scanners? No one believes in magic anymore. Well, if that's the case why do you suppose we stay out of a black cat's path, avoid walking under a ladder and put a penny in a new bride's shoe? Because we are superstitious creatures, that's why. Since the beginning … [Read more...] about Slainté! New Year – A Time of Big Portions
Sláinte! The Night of Cakes
By Edythe Preet, Columnist.
November/December 1996. Republished in Winter 2022.
No Christma-a-as! No Christma-a-as!” Such was the town crier’s chant in the streets of 17th-century Dublin when Ireland felt the hammer blow of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan iron fist. Garlands of greenery were pulled down and publicly burned. Revelry was forbidden. Priests were imprisoned. But the Irish people found ways to celebrate their most loved holiday despite the … [Read more...] about Sláinte! The Night of Cakes
Sláinte! Feile Na Marbh – the origins of Halloween
By Edythe Preet
Slainte! Columnist Edythe Preet explore how "Feile Na Marbh "or "Feast of the Dead" became Halloween and includes a recipe for Irish Barm Brack, which is traditionally served in Ireland on this day. That which we know as All Hallows Eve actually began as a harvest festival several millennia ago in Ireland. Though the evening’s popular colors are black and orange, they might as … [Read more...] about Sláinte! Feile Na Marbh – the origins of Halloween