Brianna Parkins: Ireland, you can slag the Rose of Tralee all you like but it’s not really for you

It is August. The time of back-to-school sales catalogues being pushed under the door, tourists clogging the narrow footpaths of cities, and optimistic stocks of flip-flops being marked down in shops to get rid of them.

We all have our own personal markers of passing seasons. For some, the Fleadh Cheoil, or two weeks in a Donegal caravan, or persistent pre-9am lawnmower racket coming from neighbours, are the harbingers of the last days of summer.

Personally, I like my signs to be more reliable, things that occur every year with comforting persistence. That is why, for me, August starts with the first tender blooms of online annoyance at the Rose of Tralee.

[ Rose of Tralee confirms married and trans women can enter festival ]

It usually starts off as reactions to articles telling us the annual event that happens every year in Kerry is indeed happening this year. Some of us are aghast at this news. Then the columns and opinion pieces trickle in asking whether the “beauty contest that is actually not a beauty contest at all” has a place in modern Ireland. Is it setting Irish women back? Is it all a clean bit of fun? Or in that uniquely Irish way, is it all of these things? Where else would you get a woman opening a wine bottle on stage being classed as a talent? We’ll watch it anyway, but slag it off afterwards, as is the tradition of our people.

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As July swirls around the drain, my inbox usually fills with emails from people asking me what I think about it all, “as a former Rose”. Which is a lovely form of address, given I participated so long ago I am classified as potpourri. The answer is usually a refusal. One reason is that Patrick Freyne writes about it funnier and better than I do. The other is that the televised night itself with all the gúnas and the “you know yourself Dáithí”-ing is only a tiny and temporary part of being a Rose.

When we find ourselves so far away from our country, the things we used to cringe at now become comfortingly patriotic

See, what Irish audiences don’t understand is that the Rose of Tralee is not for you. It is not about who wins, nor about the televised RTÉ special and the betting odds. The festival that, to outsiders, can look like an “Irish-off” between women vying to be the best, good-grand-girleen is not actually for the people in Ireland. It is more important to the people who don’t live in Ireland at all.

Around February each year across Canada, America and Australia, you will find older Irish men and women in quiet community halls setting up chairs. They have read and answered emails about renting tea urns, filling out insurance and the minutes of last year’s meetings. They are putting out plates of soda bread and jam, and getting ready to greet potential Rose entrants as committee volunteers, as they have done for 10, 20 or 60 years in some places.

[ Rose of Tralee: Dáithí Ó Sé looked like a man briefly encased in a giant condom ]

Sometimes they are godparents to each other’s children. They have walked, on occasion, a younger member down the aisle when a father could not. They are the second set of grandparents to children separated by long flights and broken Skype connections. They have formed a family for each other when they had to leave their own behind to try to get ahead in life.

The Irish diaspora did not happen by choice. People left because they had to. As they are still doing

Members of the Sydney Rose centre call it the “Hotel California” – we can check out but we can never leave. Some are former Roses, but others are just part of the Irish community determined to keep a small bit of home going while being so physically far from it. The centre so far has never been short of entrants, and the ball is a sell-out most years. When we find ourselves so far away from our country, the things we used to cringe at now become comfortingly patriotic.

For some elders in the community, it is the one night a year they can count on hearing familiar accents, the songs they know the words to and the chance to ask someone if the places and people they remember are still there all these years later.

[ Rose of Tralee: so safe and smug you just know Donald Trump would approve. Oh look, he does ]

The Irish diaspora did not happen by choice. People left because they had to. As they are still doing. One of the most bittersweet things is hearing someone who emigrated 50 years ago still refer to Ireland as “home”.

For the international centres, sending a young woman to Ireland every year is only part of their function. Most have strong sponsors, thanks to the generosity of Irish immigrants who tend to do well for themselves when they get the chance. If the international festival ceased, I think they would still carry on throwing balls and organising local crownings. Any excuse really to come together, sing some songs and keep a bit of home alive.