Reader Submission Corner: The Blight That Is St Patrick’s Day
Submitted by Holly
Well, once again Saint Patrick’s Day is upon us. Once again the Judgment Day has failed to come before March 17th, and now we all have to live through another green-soaked embarrassment. Oh well, maybe next year.
When people find out that I am not a huge fan of St. Pat’s Day, they often exclaim: “But aren’t YOU part Irish???,” or “But doesn’t your dad COME FROM Ireland?,” as if I am committing an ethnic sin akin to, say, being Italian and punching the Virgin Mary and then your grandmother. Or being Greek and not wearing crappy baby-blue and white togas during the soccer season. It creeps them out, because I, as a proud Irisher, hate this day with every fiber of my being, and this makes them question everything they believe in.
Yes. I did support the celebration of this black day once upon a time. I fell into the gaudy commercial trap lined with green socks and pins shaped like horrible little racist caricatures of Irish “leprechauns” (which are clearly just a form of anti-Irish propaganda that they sell back to us at $2 a shot). I wore the green, forgoing my 360-day-a-year black wardrobe. I felt that the world was laughing with me, not AT me. See, now I know different.
And I am here, as a Pearse representing that great hero, Patrick Pearse, to work for the freeing of the Irish mind from its shackles. I am here to rid the world of this horrendous day of Irish-bashing!
Patrick Pearse died at the hands of the British so you wouldn't have to sell yourself for a cheap pint of green beer.
Irish-bashing?!? People will gasp when I say this, as they, too, have fallen into the fallacy that this day celebrates, rather than degrades, the Irish.
Listen, if people wanted to celebrate the Irish, there’d be a memorial day in remembrance of all the poor O’Slobs who died for ten cents a day building the stinking Eastern railway, right? They wouldn’t institute a yearly rehearsal of the worst stereotypes of our people. No, St. Patrick’s Day is a blight perpetrated against the Irish in North America by the beer and greeting card industries, and is created by the Republicans to keep another, presumably drunk and Catholic, “President Kennedy II” out of the White House.
Wake up, Irish Country Men! See this day for what it is!
Instead of just ranting about it, I will demonstrate the crapulence of this day above all others…
THE DRINKING! Oh, my, the Drinking!
People celebrate St. Paddy’s Day in only one way: by drinking green beer until the streets run with foamy-green vomit and many thousands of dollars worth of property damage has been sustained. Drinking and fighting. Fighting and drinking. “Oh, yes, that IS Irish, isn’t it?” Hell, I’ve seen Korean folks slap on some green felt and “act Irish” for a night by getting absolutely tanked. They think it’s a joke— They think WE are a joke!
Think about this! The day commemorates the entrance of Catholicism into Ireland (which I will return to in a moment), yet no English, Jewish or German guy celebrates St. Paddy’s Day by pinning a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” button on and attending Mass. No! They all play on the worst of the racial stereotypes, and they love it because NO ONE GETS MAD AT THEM FOR ACTING LIKE RACISTS!
St. Pat’s Day is a day for getting away with prejudicial and jerkish behaviour. That’s what they are celebrating — not us!
Sure George B. Shaw enjoyed a beer now and then, but he took some time out to do some other things.
If they wanted to celebrate us, they’d read some Joyce or put on a Shaw play. But no, they drink and then break something… and we participate. Why? Because we are “Queens for a Day,” and, after centuries of getting screwed, we are so pathetic that we turn into the ugly chick in school who doesn’t care if the captain of the basketball team asked her out as a joke— we were just happy to get some attention!
How do you think the Jews (my other half) would react if Hallmark instituted a National Yid Day, and encouraged everyone to get circumcised and practice some shady banking techniques? Or maybe to fit someone for a shoddy, over-priced coat? Or to celebrate by the eating of bagels and the defiling of Gentile girls of virtue pure? Or how about the ever-popular poisoning of wells and making wine out of the blood of blond Christian babies?
They would riot, and well they should. So the question becomes why the Irish hate themselves sooo bloody much that we accept such crappy treatment?
Are you prepared to beg for acceptance… and then for penicillin?
Self-hatred comes up again in the presence of “Kiss Me I’m Irish” regalia and the like.
The “Kiss Me” buttons grew out of the civil rights and self-worth campaigns of the 60s and 70s, but now they are grim shadows of what they once were. Now they are what lonely guys, no matter what their ancestry, pin to themselves when they go out to bars in March, in hopes that some drunken chick will hang on them for a moment. These buttons are like a more pathetic version of mistletoe, because they have to purchased and hung on YOURSELF, like a sad “Oh, LORD, I am so very lonely” Kick-Me sign.
Listen, kids, it is just not worth it! You don’t want to invite drunk, sweat-stained old cafeteria ladies at the local pub taking you up on the pin’s offer, do you? Their low-riding, pendulous breasts squishing against your belt buckle. Will THAT be enough to make you feel accepted and loved, even though you hate YOURSELF?
And beside this sad state, the truth of the matter is, this “Kiss Me” shit is really unsanitary. How many people, as the face of a total stranger hurtles towards their buttoned self (at an alarming speed) have caught just a hint of green vomit at the corner of the kiss-er’s lips just seconds before having them pressed up onto the kiss-ee’s face? I am not a scientist or a doctor, but I would be interested to know the disease rates involved in such incidents.
This poor animal wishes for death. Another victim of St Patrick's Day
Why, I’d bet that every April, the cases of mono or hoof and mouth spike amongst the Irish population by about 80%. You see? It’s genocide by germ warfare, and they have somehow gotten the Irish to participate in our own downfall. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some sort of sterilization agent is added to green food colouring in March, just for that which is sold to Irish-patronized pubs. Wake up, people! This is a conspiracy.
And, finally, let us think of the Reason for the Season: Saint Patrick.
Saint Patrick: The man who, if I ever met him in a dark alley, would be leaving without his balls. For that is the way that he left the Irish.
The whole day is a horror. Once, we were free. We wore skins, worshipped whatever shrub we wanted, made war and love with equal fury, and ate hearts whenever we got the chance. We were dirty, sure, but we LOVED it. The Irish were strong, and no Limeys could stick their bureaucratic pens up our self-determining arse-holes. Then there arrived Old Pat. Driving the snakes before him, as he drove out our fire and lust for life, he destroyed something wonderful, and replaced it with the Church. The Church – the greatest primer for slavery the world has ever known. Instead of sex and freedom, we got rules and the British. Quite a trade, indeed… Something certainly worth celebrating, no?
Rolling in his grave
So instead of celebrating this nightmare of a day, find some other day… Kennedy’s birthday, maybe, or that of Braddock. Or maybe your own birthday, in keeping with our lost Irish and pagan pride. Or how about the day you moved out of your parents’ house and no longer had to go to church? THAT is a day to celebrate the taking back of your Irish independence.
But, please, please, please, NOT Saint Patrick’s Day! Any day but that. It is a sham and a mockery, and a mockery of a sham.
Join me in my fight! I call on all true Irish to wear the black on St. Pat’s Day in mourning for our spiritual death, and in anger over the way we are dehumanized by their crude and foul picture of us.
Seriously folks, they are not laughing with us, at all.
“Kiss Me, I’m Irish”? “Kiss Me Arse,” more like.
