The Saint Patrick's Day Frogs Revisited

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 by Patti Liszkay                                                                               by Patti Liszkay 
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​THE SAINT PATRICK'S DAY FROGS REVISITED

      In honor of St. Patrick's Day, and in honor of a certain yummy cream-filled pastry from my childhood that I still to this day think about and yearn for at this time of year, I'm going to re-post a blog that I wrote on March 17, 2019 about this particular St. Paddy's day delight.
         Happy St. Patrick's Day to all. May your day be as sweet as a St. Patrick's Day Frog.

THE SAINT PATRICK'S DAY FROGS

   Back when I was young, when my family lived in a row house on Barnett Street in Northeast Philadelphia (our old house today, below),

​...and I was a student at St. Timothy's  school,

...I used to love St. Patrick's Day. I loved the day for three reasons. First of all, even though St. Patrick, beloved Catholic saint as he was, did not merit for his feast day a Holy Day of Obligation on the Church calendar -  which  would have snagged a day off from school for us Catholic kids - St. Patrick's Day was nonetheless treated as a day of fun at St. Timothy's. We were allowed to wear something green with our uniforms and bring our crayons to school and towards the end of the afternoon our usual classwork was suspended, and we were allowed to instead color pictures of St. Patrick that Sister would hand out to us.

        The second reason I loved St. Patrick's Day was that the day after the following day was March 19, St. Joseph's Day, which, while also not a Holy Day of Obligation, was important enough a Church feast day that it was a day off from school.
         But the very best thing of all about St. Patrick's Day was the St. Patrick's Day Frogs.
       The St. Patrick Day Frogs were a delicacy to be savored only on St. Patrick's Day and found only at Haegele's Bakery, which was a block up Barnett Street from our house.

       The Frogs were a sort of amphibian-shaped pastry, the bottom two-thirds of which was cake and the top third a mound of vanilla creme the kind of which was used to fill creme donuts. The cake bottom and creme top were covered with green fondant upon which was piped icing eyes and a mouth.
       Every St. Patrick's Day my mother would buy each of my four siblings and myself a St. Patrick's Day Frog.  For me coming home from school to my St. Patrick's Day Frog was on a par with the the delight of waking up on Christmas morning. I truly loved those bright green cream-headed cake frogs. 
          I believe - though the passage of years may have blurred the time line for me somewhat, and if anyone wishes to correct me on the exact year I will stand corrected - but I believe that I was nine years old and in 4th grade at St. Timothy's when I ate my last St. Patrick Day's Frog .
           It was when I was ten years old and in 5th grade at my new school, St. Christopher's,​

...that my Catholic conscience bloomed and, likely inspired by the more advanced doctrine taught in the 5th grade catechism in tandem with the exhortations of  my teacher, I became aware that it was required of me to give up something for Lent. I believe I picked sweets because that's what everybody else in the 5th grade of my new school said they were  giving up for Lent. So I gave up sweets, too.
       It was to my joy when I came home from school on that St. Patrick's Day to find that my mother had traveled across town to Haegele's to buy my brothers, sister, and I our Frogs. And to my horror when I remembered that it was Lent and so I couldn't eat my St. Patrick's Day Frog.
       I wanted so badly to eat that Frog, to bite into that sweet green icing at just the spot where one hit part cake and part creme, my favorite way to eat it. I yearned to eat the Frog, I longed to eat it, but I knew that I couldn't eat it because it was Lent and I'd given up sweets and I truly believed at ten years old that a Catholic could no more put into her mouth something she had given up for Lent than she could eat meat on Friday.
     And it wasn't just that I longed for my St. Patrick's Day Frog. I grieved for it, too, because now I knew that St. Patrick's Day arrived in the middle of Lent, that it would always arrive in the middle of Lent, and that I'd never eat another St. Patrick's Day Frog for the rest of my life.
      I don't remember who ended up eating my Frog.
      But I'm sure I didn't grieve for too long, and I rather think that was the last time my mother made the trip to Haegele's for the St. Patrick's Day Frogs, anyway.
       Anyway, that was sixty years ago, and in truth I'd forgotten all about the Frogs.
       Until last night when my brother Joe sent my sibs and myself this picture that he found yesterday on the Haegele's Bakery Facebook page:

​     I swear, somehow, someway,  I will eat another St. Patrick's Day Frog before I croak!