As much as I love the color green and watching drunk people stumble over their blurry feet into their own vomit, I never really believed in the concept of St. Patrick's Day. Being the popular, well-connected, social butterfly that I am, I obviously have hoes in different area codes. Including Irish friends. And guess what? They don't even celebrate St. Patrick's Day. It actually has barely anything to do with the Irish culture at all. Yes, technically it's an established Christian holiday, but really it's an established American drinking day.
Somewhere along the way, we Americans decided that, just like everything else, we were going to promote our beer laden culture even further, and ruin a perfectly normal day in the middle of March to promote alcohol. As if beer needed any further promoting, what a genus idea. Or actually, what a Guinness idea (bad pun). We effectively ruined any and all progress made by the poor defeated beings who try to run Alcoholics Anonymous, and skyrocketed the salaries of the lucky bastards who work for Bud Light. Now, thanks to St. Patrick's Day, we have to be extra careful when driving on the streets all day on the seventeenth. And god forbid if the day after is a working day- it's guaranteed most employees will have suddenly come down with a severe case of (insert illness here) and will be taking a sick day off work.
Not only is this fake holiday detrimental to society and it's employment, but it also promotes some very unfair stereotypes. Because of the media, myths about four leaf clovers, and Lucky Charms cereal, we now think that all Irish men are three-foot-tall red-headed leprechauns who live in black pots at the end of rainbows and pinch you in the ass if you're not wearing any green. Now maybe I'm wrong (it doesn't happen very often), but I'm fairly certain that not all of this is true of the Irish- in fact, I'm fairly certain I've seen some of them living in red pots. Purple ones too. Uh huh.
But in all seriousness, it's unfair to support that kind of image about any group of people. How would you like it if people thought of you as a midget who's only job was to throw out gold coins and spread drunken cheer, all while using a thick Irish accent? Not very much, I'm guessing. Except for the accent part because that's very attractive for the ladies.
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