Six years ago, I decided it would be fun to go all in with celebrating St Patrick’s Day. My children’s ages ranged from 3.5 to 0. No one was in school and I wasn’t working, so all our days looked pretty much the same. I figured a fun and random celebration in March would be exciting.
That first year, a naughty leprechaun visited our house while we were sleeping. In the morning, my kids were shocked to see that he had left little green footprints on our linoleum and green pee in the toilet. He’d sprung the traps that they’d (not so) expertly set for him. He left gold coins everywhere. The leprechaun’s visit was the highlight of our month. Just as I’d hoped.
But as the years have gone on, I see I’d made a miscalculation that first year. I hadn’t realized that my children would expect those same traditions every year. Yes, staying up late and creating elaborate leprechaun mischief was fun once, even twice, but my enthusiasm has decreased every year since. As the kids started school and I went back to work, St Patrick’s Day wasn’t the most exciting part of our month anymore. And some of the traditions feel more like chores than part of a celebration.
If you are considering adding new St Patrick’s Day traditions, I wanted to give you a guide to how well the traditions have worked for my family. Here are seven of our traditions ranked in order of my least favorite to my favorite.
7. Green Food
I’ve tried a few green snacks over the years and have learned that any green food just looks spoiled. Our least successful food was green Rice Crispy Treats that looked moldy.
6. Gold Coins
In theory, scattering gold coins around the room is an easy prank/gift. But finding those coins at a store can prove tricky – especially as the holiday gets closer. Your best bet is the bulk food aisle in Winco. You can also find gold coins at Hobby Lobby. When we lived in the southern United States, I knew I had to buy gold coins in December when they were on sale for Hanukkah and save them until March. Some years, I haven’t been able to find and/or save gold coins, so the Leprechaun left candy that looked suspiciously like Easter Candy.
5. Foot Prints
I did this the first few years. I made little footprints all over our linoleum with green washable fingerpaint. This was cute, but time consuming. I stopped making footprints the year we lived with my in-laws and haven’t done it since. Part of the reason is that I don’t just have green finger paint on hand like I did when my house was full of toddlers. But the other reason is that it was a lot of work to craft those footprints. I told the kids that the leprechauns in Utah and Idaho must be better about wiping their feet than the ones that visited us in Texas and Alabama.
4. Trapping a Leprechaun
This is fun, but also kind of exhausting. At first, my kids didn’t understand physics so we just set up boxes that would fall on the leprechaun. Now that they are getting older, the traps are getting more elaborate. My enthusiasm for this tradition has waned each passing year. Fortunately, my husband enjoys creating traps with our kids and then springing them. I think the best year was when he made it look like the leprechaun burst out of the box Mr. Kool-Aid style.
3. Leprechaun Pranks
Putting green food coloring into the toilet is a super easy prank. Turning milk green is also fun but can fall under the “green food looks unappetizing category” so I only do this if the milk is more than halfway gone. This year, I plan to do more physical pranks like putting all the chairs on top of the table or other random things that are easy to do.
2. Wearing Green
This was the only thing I did for St Patrick’s Day when I was a kid. Now, with all the extra traditions I’ve added to the holiday, it’s almost an afterthought. But I still like it. The kids and I will pick out their St Patrick’s day outfits a couple days in advance. One year, we painted shirts with four-leaf clovers on them. We used supplies from an earlier project so this wasn’t an extra expense. My kids loved them.
1. Themed Treats
This is the tradition that has held up the best. I think it works well because I can vary what we do from year to year depending on what sounds fun. Aside from the aforementioned green food, I’ve always enjoyed putting together a fun St Patrick’s Day themed treat.
One year I tried spray painting Oreos to look like coins. That was cool, but the food safe spray didn’t cover the cookies as much as I thought and the cookie coins were a little redundant when we had real coins.
The most successful St Patrick’s day treat has been food rainbows made with fruit. We’ve made them on pans a couple years and other years we made rainbow fruit kabobs. I really like these because they are yummy, but not super sugary.
I do regret creating so many elaborate St Patrick’s Day traditions all at once, but I don’t regret celebrating the holiday. Even after 6 years, it is still fun to stop and make a random day in March feel special.
What are your favorite and least favorite St Patrick’s Day traditions?
