The Night We Tried to Catch a Leprechaun
The Night We Tried to Catch a Leprechaun
Every year around this time, when March starts to feel just a little softer and you can sense spring somewhere off in the distance, the leprechaun conversation begins again in our house. It’s never very serious. More like a quiet little tradition that sneaks back into the conversation the way certain holidays do when you have kids. Someone will casually mention that St. Patrick’s Day is coming, and before long the question inevitably appears: Do you think we could catch a leprechaun this year?
The truth is, we’ve been trying for years, and so far he’s managed to escape every single time.
The night before St. Patrick’s Day has turned into a sort of unofficial craft night around here. Nothing fancy. Just a kitchen table covered in whatever supplies we happen to have in the house. Shoeboxes appear. Markers roll out of drawers. Tape gets passed around. Someone inevitably finds glitter and suddenly everything sparkles whether we planned for that or not. The kids start sketching ideas and debating the most important question of the entire project, which is how exactly one goes about trapping a leprechaun.
The basic theory usually involves a box turned upside down. Somewhere in the top we cut a small hole, just big enough for a curious leprechaun to peek inside. The idea is that he’ll climb up to investigate and fall right in. Of course, the trap is useless without bait, so that part gets a lot of attention. Chocolate gold coins are always the obvious choice, although sometimes rainbow candies make their way into the trap too. One year someone made a tiny sign that said “FREE GOLD,” which seemed like a pretty convincing argument if you ask me.
Then comes the ladder, which is where things start to get a little inventive. Popsicle sticks, LEGO bricks, building blocks, stacked books, whatever happens to look vaguely like a path leading up to the trap. The kids treat this part very seriously, adjusting angles and testing structures as though the leprechaun might arrive with a full engineering inspection. By the time we’re done, the whole thing looks wonderfully ridiculous and exactly like something a child would build in hopes of catching a magical creature.
Before bedtime the trap gets placed somewhere strategic. Sometimes on the kitchen table, sometimes near the door, wherever seems like the most logical place for a wandering leprechaun to stumble upon treasure. Then everyone goes to bed with a little extra curiosity about what the morning might bring.
And every year, morning tells the same story.
The leprechaun was definitely there, but he escaped at the last minute.
There might be rainbow candies scattered across the table as though he dropped them while making his getaway. A few gold coins appear in strange places. Once in a while there are tiny green footprints leading across the counter, which causes a lot of excitement and at least one very serious investigation about how small shoes could make such perfect little marks. Sometimes he even leaves a note. Nothing long, just a quick message saying something like, “Nice try. You almost had me.”
Breakfast on St. Patrick’s Day usually ends up feeling a little festive too. I’ve been known to arrange fruit into a rainbow on a plate, or leave a few extra gold coins near the cereal bowls. It’s never anything elaborate, just small touches that make the morning feel slightly different from the usual rush to get out the door.
What I’ve realized over the years is that none of these traditions require much effort at all. A shoebox, a handful of candy, a few minutes of quiet preparation after everyone else has gone to bed. But to kids, it feels enormous. It feels like the world shifted just a little while they were sleeping, like something magical slipped into the house overnight and left tiny clues behind.
And those are the moments that stay with them.
Years later, long after the traps stop appearing on the kitchen table, those little stories tend to stick around. Someone will remember the year the leprechaun left candy everywhere, or the time we were convinced we almost caught him. The trap will be described in great detail, as though it had been an engineering marvel rather than a decorated shoebox held together with tape and hope.
Almost catching a leprechaun, it turns out, is a pretty good tradition.
Because the magic was never really about catching him anyway.
A Few Other Little St. Patrick’s Day Things We’ve Come to Love
Over the years a few other small traditions have quietly slipped into our St. Patrick’s Day mornings, the kind of things that take almost no time but somehow make the day feel special right from the start. I think that’s what I love most about holidays with kids. It doesn’t take much to turn an ordinary weekday into something they’ll remember.
Sometimes it’s as simple as the leprechaun leaving a trail of rainbow candy across the kitchen table overnight. The kids come downstairs and immediately start following it like tiny detectives, trying to piece together exactly what happened while they were asleep. A few gold coins appear along the way, and suddenly breakfast feels like part of a treasure hunt.
Other years the leprechaun seems to get into the refrigerator and turns the milk green, which causes a lot of laughter and a brief moment of hesitation before anyone decides whether it’s still safe to drink. Once in a while he leaves a tiny note tucked beside the cereal bowls, usually something playful about how close the trap came to catching him this time.
None of these little surprises are complicated, and honestly that’s probably why they work so well. They feel spontaneous and a little silly, like the leprechaun himself might have thought of them at the last minute.
And maybe that’s the whole point.
Childhood has so many ordinary mornings, so many days that blur together with school lunches and backpacks and the rush out the door. But every now and then it’s nice to wake up and feel like something unexpected happened while everyone was sleeping.
A shoebox trap. A handful of candy. A trail of gold coins across the kitchen table.
Just enough magic to start the day. ☘️
