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Leave it to Americans to completely bastardize a legit holy day and the traditions associated with it. We always knew that the level of intense debauchery that’s associated with St. Patrick’s Day stateside probably isn’t commemorative of St. Patty’s frequenting of Irish pubs. (And F.Y.I., until recently, booze was unavailable on the Emerald Isle on exactly two days per year–Good Friday and Mar. 17. Now that’s Ire-onic!) We realized that, at some point in the distant past, people probably took the sanctity of the day seriously, but we never imagined that even our tamer St. Patrick’s practices were so wrong.
It turns out that in Ireland, it would be more appropriate to pinch someone for wearing excessive green than it would be to pinch them for not wearing any. According to Irish superstition, green is the favorite color of mischievous child-stealing fairies and wearing too much of it is a sure-fire way to get yourself snatched. People would wear live shamrocks, but only because they represent the holy trinity, and the color actually associated with St. Patrick is blue. Whoops, our bad.
So, tomorrow, when you’re contemplating pulling on that obscenely chartreuse “Luck of the Irish” T-shirt, you might want to reconsider, lest you attract the real luck of the Irish. You know, the same luck that brought the Great Potato Famine–and, come to think of it, sundry other historical middle fingers. Just ask John Lennon, Johnathan Swift and Kermit the Frog: It’s not easy being green.
St. Patrick’s Day: Fact vs. Fiction [National Geographic]
Some Time in New York City [Wikipedia]
A Modest Proposal [Wikipedia]
Earlier: How To: Make a Doorstop Out of A Fork
Comments:
Mar 16, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I thought this was going to be a guide to getting captured by Ken Shamrock. I would agree, though, he’s definitely a fairy. You see him get knocked out in 10 seconds by Sakuraba? Brutal.