St Beer's Day

St. Patrick's Day is the uncontested winner for "Holiday with the Most Loyal (and loud and raucous and drunk) Core Following."

I'm not entirely sure St. Patrick's Day was originally a strategic gimmick to kick-start beer sales in the spring, or an attempt to slide a minor holiday into March, in case really nice weather permits the wealthy to open their summer cottages early.

The original St. Patrick (not to be confused with the little green man to be mentioned later) was a very influential and "connected" guy, who supposedly rid Ireland of snakes. There is some dispute over this, as scientists have since agreed that pre-ice-age continental drift is a more likely explanation of the dearth of snakes on the island. But it's probably a good thing that nobody tried to pin THAT one on him, as it probably would have counted as heresy or something.

Nonetheless, this proves once again, that it's not what you DO that's important, it's who you know. And if you know somebody high enough in the chain of command that can pass a convincing rumor that you're responsible for some huge fortunate coincidence, you're pretty much set for life. At least in the beer department.

Anyhow, as we celebrate St. Patrick's Day today - it may just as well be named "St. Beer's Day" except that it comes with an odd dress code. As any school kid knows, if you don't wear green on March 17th you get tortured. Not ONE of those kids has any idea WHY this is the case, except that the older kids pounded it into their heads in years gone by. Lest you start feeling a bit superior to these silly youngsters, this is the exact same reason we still have an income tax in the United States.

As recently as ten years ago, St. Patrick's Day dress code violations were traditionally punishable by pinching. But as that is politically incorrect these days, on account of the sexual harassment witch-hunt, stabbings and shootings seem to have come into vogue.

Besides blatant violence based on shirt color (a staunch Irish tradition if there ever was one,) we also have St. Patrick's day to thank for having food coloring come in "four packs." As just about any Kindergartner can tell you, you can mix a little blue and a lot of yellow, and get a perfectly respectable green. But put enough beer in somebody, and they're bound to botch it. Thus, the Irish lobbyists convinced the major food coloring manufacturers to include green, on the grounds that most people weren't smart enough to notice that green isn't a primary color anyway.

In fact, in 1959, this thinking became so prevalent that green was awarded an honorary "primary" position, by the Color-Blind-So-We-Don't-Care-Anyway" contingent. Which had some hefty political clout back then, and is by all accounts primarily responsible for standardizing the "shades of gray" thinking we take for granted in our most crooked socio-political circles today.

Moving right along…

That whole thing about four-leaf-clovers, as we now know, was a ploy by our parents to keep us occupied at picnics so they could have some peace and quiet. The luck, it would seem, was on their side, for being able to snow us for so long.

And the only other major St. Patrick's Day phenomenon that begs to be addressed is the occasional but timely occurrence of a rainbow.  Which has the unlikely side effect of producing a small green man with large hat and a pot of gold (or gold-colored coins, as the case may be,) and who will summarily hand it over, so the tale goes, if you kiss some rock. This sounds remarkably like someone daring me to lick a flagpole in the dead of winter.

I'll just take a beer, thanks. Green.