According to popular lore, St. Patrick drove all the snakes from Ireland. He also apparently raised the dead. Now, 1,600 years later, every March 17, we drink copious amounts of green beer and vomit copious amounts of green puke. This is ostensibly to celebrate the great snake-hatin’, corpse-raisin’ St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.
To be honest, I despise St. Patrick’s Day. It is amateur hour – a day when throngs of loud cretins pour into the streets to drink Guinness and whiskey. Why? Because the calendar told them to.
When I want to drink, I drink. I don’t need a special day. But when you go out on St. Patrick’s Day – or Cinco de Mayo, or New Year’s – you bump greasy shoulders with people who, from the looks of things, have never seen a bar in their lives, with the possible exception of their multiple viewings of Girls Gone Wild. They act accordingly.
Wearing a green plastic bowler hat and a shirt that says “Kiss me I’m Irish” does not, in fact, make you Irish; it makes you an asshole. I suppose I do not fully understand the Irish Pride movement either – it baffles me, frankly. I’m a quarter Finnish, but I don’t wear a shirt that says “Flog me in a sauna, I’m Finnish.” And this isn’t because I’m ashamed of Finland. Actually, I’m rather proud of its major exports: insanity and alcoholism (a close third being Nokia).
Last year, for the first time, I broke down and went out on St. Patrick’s Day, but it was a slightly different situation because it was Paris. I was visiting a friend in the Netherlands for 10 days and we decided to drive to Paris for St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Yes, they celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Paris in much the same way we do in the states (by drinking heavily), but if the bar we frequented was any indication, then far more cigarettes are involved. Amateur hour does not recognize international boundaries.
Later that night, unable to find boarding, my friend and I slept in our car. I felt like a real Irish person!
This year, I broke down again and went out on St. Patrick’s Day hoping to rekindle the wonderful experience I had last year. I knew it would be amateur hour. I knew it would be obnoxious. But maybe – just maybe – I would find a silver lining, and perhaps it was hiding in the bottom of a pint glass.
I didn’t and it wasn’t. I got drunk, lord how I got drunk. But it was a dirty feeling kind of drunk, perhaps because I spent the night with green paint on my face, ass-and-elbow deep in the palpitating heart of scumdouchery.
Later that night, I got into a violent verbal argument with a belligerent drunk. Again, I felt like a real Irish person!
Cinco de Mayo, which is approaching, is another day on which people feel the overpowering desire to drink. Most people who drink on Cinco de Mayo probably think that it is Mexico’s independence day. It isn’t and these people are stupid. They probably don’t know much about Mexico except that it produces tequila.
Nevertheless, there is a sizable Mexican community in Eugene, so the holiday has cultural significance, not that this will matter to the people who think the day is simply intended for imbibing booze.
St. Patrick’s Day is a wonderful celebration of alcoholism. It is a day when people can unite over emptied drinks, bladders and stomachs. Nevertheless, spending the evening in drunken reverie with a Rogue’s Gallery of small-potato drunks, who honestly believe that hot-headed belligerence and pickled livers are the cornerstones of Irish culture, is boring.
Thus, when Cuatro de Mayo rolls around, I’ll be at the bar drinking 42 oz. Margaritas. I’ll leave Cinco de Mayo to the amateurs. On the next St. Patrick’s Day I’ll do the same.
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