Happy (Secular) St. Patrick’s Day!
American holidays, even those that originated elsewhere, fall under three basic categories: eat-meat holidays, devour-candy holidays, and quaff-liquor holidays. We will call the last category—which includes New Year’s Eve, Cinco De Mayo, and St. Patrick’s Day—the “alcoholidays.” Most Americans associate these days only with drunkenness.
Drinking is a ritual associated with other holidays, of course. But the drinking is secondary. For instance, Independence Day is a drink-liquor-and-eat-hot-dogs holiday; Valentine’s Day is a drink-liquor-and-cry-into-your-pillow holiday. Memorial and Labor Days are foremost about working, dying, and barbequing.
But the true alcoholidays are all about getting wasted. And drinking on St. Patrick’s Day, usually on March 17th, is even accommodated by the church. But so much does the Catholic Church, which must own all holidays with the word “Saint” in it, care so much for our privilege to consume green beer that, to avoid conflict with the holy week (Easter is this Sunday), they moved St. Patrick’s Day back before the holy week began. That’s right… it already happened. On Saturday.
But you’re not Catholic, are you? And you don’t conform to arbitrary edicts from way over there in the Vatican City, do you? Us Yankees got us a parade in New York today. And we got booze here in Seattle, so you can drink like your Irish—tonight. Cheers.
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