I can speak to this phenomenon a bit. It’s part of what was drilled into us from our families. My father’s maternal grandparents were from Donegal, Ireland. Any time a single person from a Donegal family passed away in the entire city of Philadelphia, whether they were known to my family or not, my father, his brothers, and my grandmother were going to that wake to pay their respects. Once he became an adult, he became a member of the AoH, which is an Irish-American fraternal order. They’d keep some Irish customs alive (and being separated by the ocean, no doubt hallucinate some new ones). For people that are heavily invested in their families, it’s a way of feeling connected to your ancestors. I think leaving was rather traumatic for many people, so I think there is an element of mourning in the connection for some too.
I myself wouldn’t call myself Irish, but I know a great deal about Ireland and I share a deep appreciation for it despite being a Yankee. I get that it’s no doubt annoying when someone who knows nothing of the place they are claiming ownership of says they’re Irish or Italian to someone actually from Ireland or Italy, but at the end of the day I think it comes from a well intentioned place. If my family came to find we weren’t at all Irish by ancestry, I would definitely feel shocked as much of my upbringing was framed by that identity.
Gel plugs (how antiperspirant works on your sweat glands) are finicky. They need a little bit of sweat in order to form—but not too much. Antiperspirant applied in the morning isn’t ideal, because people sweat more during waking hours, when they’re active. If the armpits are too sweaty in the hours after application, the product gets washed away before it can form the plugs. The body is cooler and calmer during sleep. For gel plugs to form, “baseline sweating is optimal at nighttime before bed,” Glaser told me. Nighttime application has been shown to increase the sweat-reduction ability of normal antiperspirant from 56 percent to 73 percent.
