It's the 75th Christmas since the foundation of the Free State, and this seems a good time to reflect on the struggle for Irish independence and ask a few hard questions: like, why did we ever bother? Judging by the success of British retail businesses in Dublin in the past year, the whole independence thing was an unfortunate misunderstanding we'd like to put behind us. Already fond of shopping in the likes of Marks & Spencers and Waterstones, 1997 saw us take to Debenhams, Dixons and Boots with the same enthusiasm, and the shops have quickly become as indispensable to us as the BBC.
The year also saw the massed ranks of Tesco march into the capital where, oppressed by 75 years of freedom, we lined the streets to cheer. In the process, Dublin city centre has come to resemble more than ever the average English high street except, of course, that in the average English high street you're much less likely to meet a travelling stag party.
The peace process and the booming economy have been cited as the main reasons for the British invasion, but I'm not so sure. I have a sneaking feeling it began with Sky News including us in their weather bulletins. It used to feel kinda nice when Scott Chisum said: "Looks good over Tipperary". And when we didn't stop it there, we never would.
Much has been written about the Irish reaction to Princess Diana's death. But, for me, the defining event of 1997 was Tesco's takeover of Maurice Pratt. At the risk of exaggerating, the moment I realised he was doing the ads for them reminded me of the scene at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
In this, one of the last humanoids, lost in streets full of clones who've hatched from pods to resemble the people they've replaced, recognises a friend, one of the small number (she thinks) still on the run from the aliens. She approaches him, excited, and he reacts with the silent scream that is the tell-tale sign of the pod people.
Now I'm not for a moment suggesting Tesco is an alien culture, or that the current version of the Irish housewife's friend hatched out of a pod, but when I heard the first of those Quinnsworth/Tesco ads, I couldn't help thinking: "Jayz! They've got Maurice as well."
It's not just British business, of course. Dublin is a bit like post-war Berlin these days - not just in the sense that, in our current consumer lust, we'll be nice to anyone who offers us a pair of nylons - but in that all the world powers have a stake in us.
Planet Hollywood's establishment of a base here has copper-fastened the already strong American presence. The joint French/Italian sector in and around Grafton Street has continued building cafes where you can get a drink; an idea completely foreign to any concept of Irishness, and probably unconstitutional too. And, of course, Germany and Japan are also represented, bumper to bumper on every street.
But this plethora of consumer choice has a price, in terms of loss of identity. National identity is such an intangible thing thing that we can only define it in images: Maurice Pratt; the Clare hurling team; Danoli; Roy Keane and the way he might look at you. And in a year which also featured a political row over an attempt to demote the shamrock, it is clear that badges of identity remain important to us.
This is as true in consumerism as in everything else. In Marks & Spencers the other day buying a few microwave chicken baltis (did I say I was different?) I was struck by the way the shop flags Irish product with signs saying "Irish product".
This only highlights the huge amount of stuff which is not Irish product - including free-range eggs and chicken, which are imported from England. Coming from poultry-rich Monaghan, this saddened me. Not even our chickens range free anymore, I reflected, at least not in M & S.
Other staples of Irish life seem to be under threat. Floury potatoes, for example. Maybe I'm going to the wrong shops, but old-fashioned Irish spuds like Kerr's Pinks and, of course, British Queens are nowhere to be found these days. Strange-sounding substitutes (What exactly are these "Roosters" anyway?) are everywhere instead.
But the consumer thing is only a reflection of a broader cultural porousness that extends from TV soaps to sport, to belief itself. Nearly everybody I know is now a member of one of the two branches of the new Anglican orthodoxy, which requires you either to love or hate Manchester United. It is increasingly difficult for dissenters like myself (as a Chelsea fan since the early 1970s, I only hate Leeds) to resist the pressure to conform.
Those Quinnsworth/Tesco ads were disturbing for other reasons too. There was one in particular in which a number of people respond to Maurice Pratt's question about what they want from their supermarket. And the unsettling thing is their accents were all indefinable, lost somewhere between Dublin and Liverpool and impossible to pin down.
So, if we haven't even got our accents left, what do we have? Well, the colonising process has been reversed in a few cases. For example, I read recently there are now eight different Riverdance-style shows touring the world, a trend I would find alarming if I weren't Irish.
And for those who like to think Ireland is still a place apart, the news is not all bad either. We can still go into a newsagents and hand over £3.14 for The Spectator magazine, for instance, safe in the knowledge that in Britain, it only costs £2.20. Or we can fork out 3.85 for Home & Garden, knowing the poor Brits only pay £2.70.
It's not much, I know, but it's little things like that that still send shivers of pride down my spine.