i know it's fresh in my mind and that i should give it some time, but, i am starting to find that St. Patrick's Day is climbing to become possibly my favorite holiday. We'll see what happens in time.
This is a tough competition. i really enjoy celebrating most holidays (fuck Valentine's Day, how would you like to be a martyred saint and end up with that for your namesake?). Halloween has always been a top holiday. You get to dress-up however you want and it's perfectly acceptable. There's lots of candy involved. You are allowed, strike that, encouraged to scare people and general deviant behavior is the norm. What fun and relatively little expense, candy being pretty cheap and all.
The coup de gra of holidays has always been Christmas. The joys of Christmas have somehow managed to overshadow all those family fights, those drains on the bank account, and those cold nights out on the streets. For a short period of time every year you find yourself really believing that the world can be a better place, a place worth saving. That colorful glow that the world takes on with lights everywhere, the sentimental and nostalgic songs of the season describing peace and pleasant times, and all those customs from trees to stockings. How can you not get wrapped up in all that. The cheer becomes infectious. As long as you don't spend too much time caught up in the local malls this can be a truly magical time of year.
Costumes, Christmas Trees, candy, twinkling lights, scaring kids until they cry. How can anything think to take on these two Goliaths of holiday celebrations? That my friend is where the Irish come in. They'll take on any fight and they'll fight to the end. Why should their holiday be any different?
i've talked many times of the sincerity of things. Halloween and Christmas are incredible holidays and so personally meaningful. These two holidays, however, have seen more than their share of corruption. People have been corrupting these holidays to increasing extents.
Halloween; everyone who wants to play the role of the misfit now calls this their holiday. Drunk girls dress up like cats and play out the sexual fantasies they feel they need to hide the rest of the year. Goth kids wear the same thing they wear everyday, and still don't go out in public. Yuppies pull their kids around in wagons, not for the enjoyment of their children but to show off their designer costumes to the neighbors. Halloween is about kids getting sugar highs while wearing cheap plastic costumes, those too old to trick or treat scaring the shit out of previously mentioned kids, pumpkins getting smashed, and houses getting egged. Anything else is working to contaminate and ultimately cheapen Halloween.
i don't even need to explain the tarnishing of Christmas. The consumerism, etc. Does anyone remember the root of the holiday? Hint: it's not retail sales. Happy Holidays? What holidays? It's Christmas idiot. Don't let those other celebrations ride the coat-tail of all the hard work Christmas has put in and struggled through for all those years. Do your own work.
With all that tarnishing and insincere celebration it's hard to tout those holidays as 'favorite' without being clustered in with all those other posers laying claim to the holidays as their own. This leads me to St. Patrick's Day. Not as widely celebrated as most other holidays, it hasn't accumulated the number of 'grabber-on-ers' as say Halloween has. You'd think the whole Christ part of Christmas would limit the celebration to Christians but that isn't the case. St. Patrick's Day is still the holiday of the Irish. Sure an increasing number of people are using it as an excuse to get tanked but they all still yield to those of us who have Irish blood running through our veins. They still have a sense of respect for those of us the holiday is meant for. They are, after all, celebrating us. You're Irish or you want to be, the line is easy to distinguish.
Next, how many other cultures have such a wonderful holiday? No one is dying rivers with food coloring on Cinco De Mayo. People aren't celebrating their Italian-ness on the Ides of March (yeah i know that one is kind of out there but how many cultural holidays do we have?). A tiny little island's patron saint getting worldwide attention. With the exception of those ridiculous green beads and leprechaun hats there is not a lot of consumerism to be found. No TV specials and no mass marketing (it would interfere with Easter's sales).
So, in conclusions, the holiday is small enough to be personal yet large enough to be widely celebrated. The corruption of the intent is still low. Consumerism has not gotten it's cold hand firmly wrapped around it yet. Combine this with the quality of the celebrations that do occur (Dropkick Murphys shows) and you have some real momentum carrying St. Patrick's Day up the ranks of holiday stature. A culture that i'm proud to have been raised in has a holiday fitting of it's character.
