Please Don't Kiss Me, I'm Not Irish

Those that know me know that I will typically look for any excuse for a good time. And by “good time,” I mean “go drinking with my friends.”

“Oh really, it’s Guy Fawkes Day? I had no idea! Where are we going to celebrate?”

You only live once (a cliché, but true), and there’s no reason not to look for reasons to have fun with your friends. Or at least that’s how I try and live my life.

There is one day, however, that the rest of the natural-born world uses as an excuse to go out drinking with their friends that I will annually avoid. And that day is today.

I know what you’re thinking, “who doesn’t like St. Patrick’s Day?” Well, I don’t. I’m not exactly sure when this boycott began, because I know I have partaken in St. Patty’s Day revelry in the past. And if you think I’m an Irish-phobe of some sort, you’re wrong on that count as well. I spent a semester of college studying in Dublin, and I have nothing but fine things to say about the good people of The Emerald Isle.

In reality, it’s not the way Irish people respond to St. Patty’s Day that bothers me so much. It’s that fact that every Tom, Dick and Harry decides that they’re “Irish” on March 17, and that means getting wasted to the point of incoherence and acting belligerent because hey, that’s what Irish people do!

Seriously, is there any cultural event that perpetuates more negative stereotypes than St. Patrick’s Day? What’s the line of thinking here, since all Irish people are drunken assholes, let’s ask like drunken assholes in celebration of their fine culture? I’m surprised that folks don’t take this idea to a further extreme and start dressing up like the leprechaun from the Lucky Charms commercials.