Alert "Journal" readers may recognize the name "St. Urho." Actually, really alert readers will remember when the Finnish saint was first introduced in the "Journal" I spelled his name wrong-oops. That's all in the past, way back in 2022 when St. Urho made his first visit to Chinook. He appeared first at the Chinook Senior Center for lunch on March 16, the official St. Urho Day. Here's a bit of background to this year's runup to St. Urho's Day, 2024.

St. Urho created in Minnesota as a reaction to St. Patrick's Day

An off handed comment in a pre-St. Patrick's Day event in northern Minnesota started the journey to the creation of St. Urho's Day. A Minnesotan with an Irish background said to a local resident of Finnish descent, "Too bad you Finns don't have a saint so you can celebrate like we do for St. Patrick's Day." The Finn, pretty quick on his feet said, "Oh, but we do have a saint. It's St. Urho!" (This American Finn knew that in his native tongue Urho meant "brave" or "courageous."). That was the beginning of the legend of St. Urho.

The Minnesota Finns started adding to the idea of St. Urho. It took a while to fully develop the holiday. First, following the pattern of the legend of St. Patrick who supposedly banned snakes from Ireland, the Finns said it would be cool if their saint banned frogs from Finland. That idea didn't go anywhere. Then someone came up with the idea of a saint who banned the grasshoppers from the vineyards and saved Finland's grape crop...and wine. That seemed to resonate with the holiday creators.

Next they tried to pick a date for St. Urho's special day. At first May was suggested but soon someone, wanting to one up St. Patrick, suggested, "Let's have St. Urho's birthday on March 16, the day before the Irish start celebrating St. Patty." That really resonated, a way to start celebrating before the Irish. Over time more details were added.

How St. Urho's tradition came to Montana

A lot of Finns came to the U.S. to work in hard rock mines, especially in the upper peninsula of Michigan and the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota. When the hard rock mines in Butte began hiring and offered better wages a lot of those miners from Minnesota came west. In fact, the Helsinki Bar, within a stone's throw of the Berkley Pit in Butte, was at the center of an ethnic neighborhood peopled with immigrants of Finnish descent. Now the Helsinki Bar, which sits all by itself as the old neighborhood has been razed, is the site where each year a St. Urho is still selected and celebrated on March 16.

Looking for some more background on St. Urho, I visited with Gary Smith of Chinook. When the first St. Urho Day was celebrated in 2022 at the Chinook Senior Center, Gary, a native Minnesotan and of Finnish descent, brought a book of recipes and trivia about St. Urho. I reconnected with Gary hoping he had some insights about the famed Finnish saint. He admitted, "I'd heard of the holiday. I made jokes about my cousins who talked about St. Urho, but I never attended any kind of celebration and know nothing about St. Urho." So much for Gary's input.

St. Urho's celebration will be rekindled in Chinook this year

The first celebration at the Chinook Senior Center was in 2022. That year the senior center's cooks agreed to try their hand at fish stew, one of the traditional dishes incorporated in a St. Urho Day meal. Chocolate cake is also part of the original menu as is hard tack. The latter, rather hard to come by in this day and age. For some reason St. Urho's Day was not celebrated in 2023 at the center.

Ginger Hansen, who became the Center's Director since the first St. Urho Day celebration, said she has already purchased fish to make a special fish chowder (the original recipes called for fish head soup). Fish head soup didn't go well with potential diners who were questioned about how they felt about that particular soup. In 2022 a prospective diner went so far as to comment, "I don't usually like 'wet' cooked fish." I was never really clear what that even meant. Hansen said she would have an optional soup, tomato with "fish crackers," the kind of crackers the kids like for snacks.

That first celebration went well. St. Urho appeared with a grasshopper impaled on a pitchfork (St. Urho's trademark), in a purple robe (the color of the saint) and a gold crown. He yelled, in Finnish, the words that saved the vineyards, "Go away grasshoppers." The rest is history.

What's next?

The upcoming St. Urho Day will be celebrated at the Chinook Senior Center. Since March 16 falls on a Saturday this year (the center is closed on the weekends) the special meal and accompanying salute to St. Urho will be on Friday, March 15. Call ahead for a dinner reservation and come meet the famous Finn who is also referred to as the "Patron Saint of Vineyard Workers" in Finland. And just so you know, the holiday is basically unknown in Finland and not celebrated there, it's strictly a made-up holiday.