When I came home this afternoon, my mum surprised me with gifts for me and my boyfriend in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

For me, she got a tan baseball hat that says "MacGregor" under a Celtic knot in the tartan plaid of our family, an homage to both our Irish and Scottish heritage. My boyfriend received a really nice beer stein with the Doyle crest (his last name, of course). My mum told me that she bought us these impromptu presents because she knows how "into" our Irish heritage we are. We often joke that we have "Irish tempers" or justify our bad luck with a knowing look, a shrug and a simple, "What? I'm Irish."

Later this afternoon, I was talking with my grandmother, a Cronin before she was married, and the subject of this column came up. As I complained about my apparent inability to come up with a new take on St. Patty's Day (I wrote a column around this time last year as well), my grandmother commented on how proud her parents, my great-grandparents, would've been to see how interested I am in my Irish roots. She told me that when my grandfather met her parents, her father (who emigrated here straight from Ireland) had such a heavy Irish brogue that my grandfather couldn't understand what he was saying. And only three generations later only the most superficial (skin tone, hair color, etc.) remain as markers of the culture and heritage that my great-grandparents carried with them from Ireland.

After I hung up the phone, I started wondering how much I really know about my Irish heritage. After all, it was only a few years ago that my father's parents discovered Irish roots on that side of my family tree, and it was only in the past couple years that I started researching when my relatives came from Ireland to the U.S., what ships they crossed on, where they landed, where they lived, even where and how they met so who knows what I don't know? I mean, for at least two generations my family thought that my grandfather's name, Frederickson, was Irish, but I recently discovered that spelling the name with a 'k' is actually a German spelling. And I thought the German in my family only came from my dad's side!

Just a few hours ago before sitting down to write this, I was driving to my boyfriend's house, MacGregor hat on my head and Doyle mug safely stowed in bubble wrap in my bag. While I drove, I listened to the radio, flipping between three or four stations. During the 12-minute ride, I heard more than four ads for upcoming St. Patty's Day events at Boston and Providence bars and restaurants that enticed listeners of all backgrounds to attend with various versions of the same idea: everyone's Irish on St. Patty's Day! So what does it mean if you really are Irish on St. Patrick's Day? I'm not sure, but I do know that this will be the St. Patrick's Day when I begin trying to find out.

Paige MacGregor can be reached at macgregor.paige@gmail.com.