Yeah, so anyone who knows Irish history knows that this is a BIG NO NO:
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Um...
Yeah...
So, how is it that no one on an NFL franchise valued at $4 billion knows the very, very basic history of Ireland?
The Bears thought it would be cute to turn the Chicago River, which is colored green on St. Patrick's Day, to orange as a way of reflecting their own team colors.
But the color orange is associated in Ireland with the "Orange Order," a Protestant group associated with the Ulster Scots. These were mostly immigrants and loyalists to the British Crown that wanted Ireland to become Protestant like the rest of the United Kingdom, a process that formally started after Henry VIII separated English churches from Rome in the 1500s.
In 1922, the majority of Ireland was annexed as an independent Catholic state, but tensions continued in the few Protestant-majority counties that remained under UK control as Northern Ireland.
Anyone under 30 might not remember the bloody street-to-street fighting between paramilitary groups and the bombings carried out on both sides of the struggle between the '70s and '90s.
The Irish flag is green for the Catholics, orange for the Protestants, and white as a symbol of peace between them.
Now that you understand the conflict of "green" vs. "orange," take a gander at this again:
Yeaaaaaah.
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