St. Patrick’s Day

Or as I call it, Let’s Drink For The Sake Of Drinking And Use The Excuse Of “Ethnic Heritage” Day.

Oh, come on, people… “Everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day”?!  Jeez… looking for a justification for your alcoholism much?

St. Patrick’s Day is nothing more than yet another ridiculous late-winter “holiday” along with Groundhog Day and Valentine’s Day.  I never really understood the appeal of St. Patrick’s Day, other than maybe if you’re proud, sixth-generation full-blooded Irish, or just a raging alcoholic. To wit:

The whole Irish stereotype thing, for starters.  Leprechauns.  Erin Go Bragh.  Top o’ the Mornin’ to ya!  I guess it’s okay to perpetuate certain stereotypes if everybody else does it, right?  Not to mention how every year on March 17th you’re subjected to countless really, REALLY badly imitated Irish accents, most of them the likes of which we haven’t heard since Tom Cruise in Far and Away, Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future III, and Sean Connery in The Untouchables.  Mr. Connery, I love most of your movies, but one would think a Scot would be able to take on an Irish accent at least a little better than that.  Do people even know why St. Patrick was significant, other than “he drove all the snakes out of Ireland and led them to Jerusalem over 40 days and 40 nights”?  Bottom line, much of the legend of St. Patrick has passed through centuries of Irish folklore to the point that, much like Easter and Christmas, it’s become much more a commercialized secular celebration than the remembrance of any sort of religious event.

Someone on Twitter raised a good point this morning:  why isn’t there a widely recognized “holiday” celebrating Italians and/or Sicilians?  Or Danes?  Or Laotians?  Or the Lebanese, Latvians, Portuguese, or Romanians?  Or, for that matter, we mutts of mixed heritage?

French, German, English, Welsh, Dutch, and Scots-Irish, in case you’re curious. (Although, according to AnonCom, there’s no such thing as “Scots-Irish”; it’s just some “un-PC racist term some Anglo came up with” or something like that.  But I digress.)

Then there’s the whole green beer thing.  Whose bloody idea was THIS?!  Instead of drinking a Coors, Bud Light, etc., dyed with food coloring, how about “honoring” the Irish by drinking, say, a Killian’s Irish Red?  Or a Harp’s?  Or, if you’re into ingesting tobacco spit, even a Guinness?  In other words, a beer actually crafted in Ireland instead of dying cheap, nasty, watery beers green and calling yourself Irish for the night?

Then we have the wearing green thing.  Some unhealthily perky person somewhere came up with, “If you’re not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day, you’re going to get pinched!!”  I answer that thusly:  pinch me and I’ll kick your ass.  Actually, the original color “associated” with St. Patrick’s Day was blue, but again, I digress.  But like I say, unless you’re full-blown Irish, or maybe if you’re legitimately half Irish, you really don’t have much claim to St. Patrick’s Day, so the whole wearing green thing shouldn’t apply anyway.  But here’s the thing that perplexes me:  don’t wear green and you get pinched– by THAT little code everyone seems willing to abide.  Yet wear a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” t-shirt, button, hat, or whatever, and nobody takes THAT seriously.  What’s THAT about?!  RELATED:  Damn good thing I didn’t pay for this “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” necklace I’m wearing.  Stupid thing doesn’t work.  Neither does mistletoe, for that matter, but that’s another issue.

And the “traditional” St. Patrick’s Day meal:  corned beef and cabbage.  I don’t like the taste of corned beef.  I don’t like cooked cabbage.  But for the love of Chrysler, say that on March 17th and people look at you like you just shot their grandmother and raped their dog.  Yet, if this article is to be believed, they don’t even eat corned beef and cabbage in Ireland.

Guess this is just another example of Americans taking over and sodomizing yet another holiday, celebrating it for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways.  Good God, we can’t even celebrate Memorial Day or Veterans Day properly or with the respect they deserve; what makes us think we can pay homage to Ireland?  Chew on that while you’re drinking your falsely verdant Natty Lights, eating your mushy corned beef and cabbage, and pretending your name is Seamus Francis John O’Leary.