A few of the days we as Americans choose to celebrate as festive confuse me – yes, including St. Patrick’s Day. In fact, I’m curious how many out there actually know who St. Patrick is, let alone why we have a day dedicated to the man.
Before I get to that, however, I feel it only fair to point out that other holidays equally confuse me. Top of the list? New Year’s Eve/Day. Maybe it’s just the pragmatic in me, but I honestly don’t get the point of celebrating a new year on some randomly assigned day in the winter. Nothing irks me more than when people I talk to the few days before midnight on January 1st end our conversations with: “see you next year!” No, you will not see me next year…you will see me on Tuesday. As for the resolutions, I don’t think goal-setting should be limited to a special time of year (which is why I also have issues with Lent), particularly when those goals usually are broken by January 15th. In my eyes, New Year’s is just an excuse to party and drink – fair enough, but why not just let it be that and not try to justify it with long orations about new beginnings and “auld lang syne?”
Though I guess at the end of the day that’s also the point of St. Patrick’s Day – to party and drink. About two years ago I was on the Las Vegas strip on St. Patrick’s Day…yeah, that was an interesting experience: wall-to-wall people moving down both sides of the sidewalk, every bar and club in every casino packed to the limit, particularly the Irish pub at New York, New York. I shudder to think what New Orleans is like today.
But again, do people need the excuse of some random holiday to justify their behavior? I’m not even limiting this to drinking and partying, either. Does one awesome date on Valentine’s Day justify an entire year of either dysfunctional relationships or chronic singlehood? How patriotic is it to wave flags and shoot fireworks on the 4th of July, yet to never vote or participate in civic events during the rest of the year? Or my absolute favorite – being generous with our time and money while thinking of others more than ourselves at Christmas time, but completely disregarding those efforts for the other eleven months of the year. Do holidays simply give us an excuse?
But back to this man whose name we honor today for some inexplicable reason – St. Patrick. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, the man was a Christian missionary who was deemed the patron saint of Ireland, mostly for the legendary (not factual) story of him banishing all the snakes from Ireland.
So, I guess if you can cite some Irish ancestry in your family tree the celebration of St. Paddy’s Day makes sense. Otherwise, why are we so focused on this one? There are other saints, you know, and probably ones for the countries your ancestors did come from. For the two years I was in Brazil, I found it rather amusing that the day for every saint, not just Patrick and Valentine, were celebrated and cause to stay home from school/work and, yes, to drink and party.
So, while I will be wearing the green today (I do have Irish ancestors), I call upon all my fellow English descendants to instate the celebration of St. George’s Day on April 23. After all, we could always use another excuse to party.
-Blake
[Awkward Pause] 