Shut up, St. Patrick’s Day
Ireland, Irish people, Irish culture, Irish Spring soap, Kathy Ireland — I’ve got no beef with them, corned or otherwise. I could do without shitty Oirish accents of film and television, but that’s not Ireland’s fault, and neither is St. Patrick’s Day, but St. Patrick’s Day needs to bite me, and here’s why:
1. I look like crap in kelly green.
2. The city is overrun with amateur drinkers. You know the guy: wearing an obnoxious green plastic bowler hat and 38 sets of Mardi Bragh beads, downing Guinness and Jameson in the wrong order and chundering half-digested corned beef and cabbage in every gutter from Riverside to Canarsie — if he gets as far as the gutter. And then you see him outside the deli, boot chunks on his Notre Dame sweatshirt (and/or Chipstrocious “kiss my Blarney Stones” t-shirt), squinting with one eye at the filter end of the Parliament Light he’s mistakenly aiming into his lighter flame while totally blocking the door, and from inside you hear his girlfriend sing-song that the chips won’t stop spiiiiii-nniiiiiiing, and it’s like, the guy’s last name is probably “Negroponte” or some shit that basically means the closest he’s come culturally to Limerick is “there once was a girl from Nantucket,” and also, I just want to buy some toilet paper and not to get bralfed on, so can’t he just get drunk at home, and the other thing is that it’s one-thirty in the afternoon.
3. Cooked cabbage: tastes fine, smells like a bathtub fart trapped in an old shoe, combines with beer to create aggressive flatus that makes public transportation downright unlivable on March 18.
4. Does anyone listen to the Pogues the other 364 days of the year? No. Go figure.
5. Shut up, leprechauns.
6. What happened to the Shamrock Shake? (On the same topic: does Carvel still make the St. Pat’s ice-cream cake that’s Fudgie turned on its side and coated in soylent green?)
Tags: Chipsters on parade city living curmudgeoning music shut up bagpipes St. Patrick's Day
I’m just counting my blessings that St. Patrick’s Day isn’t on a Saturday. That’s the day I hide my irish/recovering catholic self from the craziness.
I like the idea of St. Patrick’s Day- but I hate that usual idiots suddently decide that it’s okay to be utter assh*l*s. It’s like Halloween in the city, only worse.
@Ted: “I’m in Milwaukee, so the three people who don’t drink are going to be drinking to excess, and everyone else in Milwaukee is going to be drinking… ”
There are three people in Milwaukee that don’t drink?
They must be visiting from Illinois.
(I’m from Oconomowoc…just teasin’ on you.)
@ElizabethRN: “Next person to pinch me pulls back a bloody stump.” I hear that! I still have bruises* from second grade from that shit. There oughtta be an emergency kit for elementary school kids – a blank page signed by your mom, spare lunch money, socks & underpants, and something green, because I was in tears by the end of that day!)
*(and a really old grudge, apparently)
I’m mostly Irish and entirely Catholic, so I hate that it’s become an excuse for idiots to get drunk. Freakin’ amateurs. My family takes pride in being able to drink vast amounts of beer without looking like idiots and these schmucks make a mockery of it. I live in Boston but thankfully I have the day off due to Evacuation Day so it’s easy for me to avoid all the morons.
I do still wear green though, because I look good in it.
@Ang: Thank you! I hate hate hate seeing “St. Patty’s Day” – Paddy is short for Patrick, it’s not Saint Patricia’s Day!
I play in an Irish folk band, and we assiduously avoid any place that serves green beer. It’s hard to avoid the stupid hats and the flashing green ties, unfortunately. And no, we won’t play “Danny Boy,” so shut up.
I think I prefer the Lucky Charms accents, stupid shirts, and green beer to the brand of uber-pretentious “let me tell you what St. Patrick’s Day is really all about/you aren’t going to drink Guinness out of a bottle/when I was in Galloway last year it was so much more authentic” douchebag that overruns Boston this time of year.
Man, the amateur drunks are bad enough here in Edinburgh. I think the tourists figure, ‘Hey, Scotland, Ireland, close enough!’
Ass. Hats.
And I’ll be staying in my house tonight, but the worst part is all the vomit I’ll no doubt have to sidestep on my walk to work tomorrow.
Hey, Episcopalians like saints too!
I LOVE cooked cabbage but would never cook it in my own house. And I have many fond memories of waking up hung over on March 18th wtih a green tongue.
This is my first St. Patrick’s Day outside of Utah in almost 10 years, so I had kind of forgotten it was the unofficial holiday of drinking. But I still give it a thumbs up because I managed to get in and out of Boston alive last night and saw the most amazing Dropkick Murphys show.
That said, I’m so dead tired today that I forgot it was St. Patrick’s Day and didn’t wear green.
Don’t forget all the Boondock Saints shirts and tats that come out of the woodwork. That over-rated pile of crap makes me want to go a shooting spree, and not because I identify with it. More obnoxious film cults are hard to come by.
I had a shamrock shake last week –note, it cannot be called a milkshake, just a shake. I don’t really want to think about it too much.
I just go around saying “aeh, yer efter me Luckky Charrms!” all day. And wear green. I used to try and be provocative by wearing orange, but didn’t like getting pinched that much.
The thing I think is most entertaining about St. Pat’s Day is that it is always in the middle of Lent… so during the season when Catholics (and other Christians too, I guess) are supposed to be moderating themselves and their behavior, there’s this excess of drinking based holiday. Hee.
I have never knowingly listened to the Pogues and thus have no idea if I would enjoy their music enough to listen to it any day other than 3/17. But I did usher at a concert for Danú last week and will be buying their CDs posthaste. The music was great but they also put on a tremendous concert. They somehow made a 700 seat theater feel warm and intimate and friendly.
Holly – why are Protestants “celebrating” a saint’s day? While my answer has nothing to do with wearing orage (I myself am wearing a moss green sweater today), Protestants of some stripes do observe saints’ days in some cases. Usually the biblical saints though. And as a religious thing not a beer thing. We save the beer for our church potlucks.
“There oughtta be an emergency kit for elementary school kids – a blank page signed by your mom, spare lunch money, socks & underpants, and something green, because I was in tears by the end of that day!)”
St. Patrick’s Day was big at my elementary school – lots of pinching for those who forgot or just didn’t have anything green. The nicer teachers would bring in green stickers for green-less kids to put on their shirts.
Hardly anyone in my office wore green today. I guess people grow out of the tradition.
3. I LOVE the cabbage, but I don’t cook it at home – that’s what restaurants are for! I had my share on Saturday night, which around here stood in for Tuesday night (for those of us who can’t take the day off to start drinking at 6 A.M. Yes, I mean 6 in the morning.).
4. I listen to the Pogues from time to time at other times of the year.
@ Dierdre – There is a wonderful brewpub in my hometown that absolutely celebrates Robert Burns’ birthday – haggis and bagpipes and Scottish style ale and all. I can never convince my husband to go (he fears the haggis), but they’ve been doing it for years.
I have never in my life had a Shamrock Shake, because when I was younger we only went to McDonald’s when we were traveling, and we only traveled on holidays to see my (very Irish, very Catholic) grandmother. Each year I had hope that our Easter trip would fall during the time when Shamrock Shakes were “in season,” but it never did. And now that I’m an adult I just have one; it wouldn’t live up to my dreams.
Other than that: Soda bread, good beer, Irish music and Irish dancers: Good. Obnoxious drunks, people who live down to stereotypes, people who expect me to get drunk just because I’m Irish, people pinching me for not wearing green and all manner of non-Irish foods dyed green? Póg ma thoin.
Whoops, make that “I just CAN’T have one.” Negative words are important.
@jbp – Despite being in the middle of Lent, it’s a Holy Day/Feast Day, so people are actually free to celebrate without guilt.
I’m on a college campus and I’m praying I won’t run into idiot drunks on my way back from the library tonight.
Aside from my annual shamrock shake, I am pretty much over St. Patrick’s Day. For me the annoyance comes in the form of every one of my coworkers asking why I’m not wearing green since today is my people’s day (I have an obviously Irish name, but am several generations removed from actual Irish ancestors). I get the same disbelieving response when people find out I’m not a Notre Dame fan either (but you’re Irish!!). And don’t even get me started on that stupid ND mascot…
Yeah, it’s not any better here in San Francisco – walked past a group of drunken tourists dressed like leprechauns on their way to the golf course on my way to work, at 8:45 a.m. this morning. Just because the bars open at 6am DOES NOT mean that you need to start drinking, @$$-holes. I’m staying away from my usual bar, the Irish Bank, tonight.
Green beer = ew. Green eggs (and ham) = amusing.
It is Tuesday. Tuesday is karaoke night at a local bar, and I was going to see if some friends wanted to go make idiots of ourselves behind a microphone. But then I looked at the calendar.
I live in a college town. Okay? Not only is it a college town, but the school’s three decent programs are all traditionally male fields so there’s a really high male-to-female student ratio. This translates into a metric shitload of frat boys.
St. Patrick’s Day is therefore almost exclusively an excuse for the frat boys to get slobbering wasted and violently pinch the asses of any women unlucky enough to come within ten feet of them. It does not matter if you are wearing green or not; if you leave your place of residence on St. Patrick’s Day after, say, ten in the morning, fifteen drunken frat boys will leave bruises on your ass in the first five minutes. Then they will claim not to have “seen” the enormous fucking green sweater you are wearing while in the same breath asserting that you’re ugly anyway and they don’t want to fuck you, as if this is somehow disappointing.
@ Marian: Heh. I couldn’t remember what the expression often rendered in English as “pogue mahone” meant, but I think you just reminded me. So thanks for that.
The parade of drunk and stupid is well underway here in Boston, to the surprise of exactly no one. (I imagine it’s worse in other parts of the city; it’s just gotten loud over here on State Street in the last hour or so.) SHUT UP, bagpipes. Also: “chipstrocious.” Awesome.
The Shamrock Shake lives on in Silver Spring, Maryland. You were so close!!!
Brilliant post. A March 17th classic is born. I do listen to the Pogues at Christmas, as well–“Fairytale of New York” is so wonderfully dismal.
My employer tied “Green = Environmentalism” and “Green = St. Patrick’s Day together”, and held Go Green event in the lobby today. I didn’t go–I had a deadline to meet. But I heard they raffled off a Smart Car.
@Marian – can I get a pronunciation on “Póg ma thoin” pretty please? (I was able to find what it meant, but I’d love to say it properly!)
Go raibh maith agat! (I sure hope that says “thank you!!!”)
“”pogue mahone”” – Thanks, Sandman!!!
Heehee!
@Margaret: I have to confess, I have never heard it spoken – I’ve only seen it on “sassy” T-shirts. But this page – http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/gaelic.html – has pronunciations of dozens of Gaelic phrases. You supply your own brogue. “Póg ma thoin” is listed (under “useful phrases,” hee) as “poag mah hone.” I have no idea how accurate it is.
Um, let’s pretend I’m not Irish then, for the sake of this conversation.
I did see that my local McDee’s has the Shamrock Shake available – what flavor is it anyway? Lime? Mint? Does it taste like clovers?
“smells like a bathtub fart trapped in an old shoe”
I love you. That made me snort.
Today was the day of our office building’s blood drive. I donated my pint of AB- and picked up a Blood Center/St. Patrick’s Day pint glass. I’m proudly drinking OJ out of it right now. And I’m very happy that I have a good excuse to stay home tonight rather than go out to an overcrowded bar to drink bad green beer.
I must say, all of this is very entertaining…I cannot believe people *actually* pinch people for not wearing green. What a bunch of idiots. I’m all for having fun, but no pinching! Glad I’m not leaving the house today, wow.
Hmmm . . . I’m actually going to be at a bar tonight. My family does live trivia every Tuesday night. I really hope that it won’t be rowdy, since the bar’s not downtown nor near a college, but it might also mean that it’s full of drunk people who decide to play trivia and ignore the “no cheating” rule. And then get angry when you can see them all using their iPhones to find the answers while being “sneaky” and holding them under the table.
Shamrock Shake advice: ask them for half shamrock and half chocolate, and you’ve got yourself one fine shake. Unless they just glare at you and tell you they can’t do that with their fancy new machines, but as a former McDonalds worker, that was one of the most popular treats of the year for those in the know. (Yes, there’s a secret society of those In the Know about fast food delicacies.)
Thank goodness I never lived where they do the pinch thing. I’d have killed someone by now and be spending my life in prison.
I wore a pin that says “Kiss me I’m Flyerish” (for my NHL boys) as my only green. I don’t have any bright green although many other shades look good on me. I’m 1/4 Irish, 1/2 German, 1/4 English and allergic to beer. I find being around drunks unsettling at the best of times.
So tonight we went to a BYOB, which was the perfect place to have a lovely dinner sans shenanigans.
@ Sue – yeah, lots of pubs around here do the Robbie Burns day thing, too, but you don’t see people without tartan in their blood stumbling around in kilts from 11 a.m. onwards. (Engineers at my university did that, but during frosh week – totally different time of year.) I guess “fearing the haggis” (hee!) is the reason.
I have never heard of the pinching thing before. Man, that’s obnoxious.
Did anyone catch John Oliver interviewing people during the parade on the Daily Show? HILLARIOUS! “J! E! T! S! JETS JETS JETS!!!!” Heeeee. I’m cool with drunken green-wearing idiots if they make for awesome television.
My husband did use yesterday as an excuse to drink Guiness, which I will forgive since he’s at least a quarter Irish. Also, it made for an amusing trip to Target to get said beer, in which I walked up to the beer aisle to find that the entire end display consisted of Harp, Guiness, and Killians.
I had completely forgotten about the Shamrock Shake. Honestly the only thing worth getting at McD’s. I used to make my own shakes when I worked at an ice cream place by using the creme de mint syrup. Mine were much, much more awesome, and I wish I had thought of adding chocolate at the time.
Sars, if you like green, you can wear any shade of it, I promise. It doesn’t have to be kelly green, or any fluorescent shade of green. Even olive green is fine – there was a lot of it in my office. Hunter green would actually be excellent with your colouring.
I didn’t wear any green, although I actually own a number of green bits and pieces. I didn’t have time to dig anything out, and fortunately no one was suicidal enough to pinch me. I’m Irish 365 days a year; I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, and I sure as heck don’t have to wear green to please anyone else. I’m either getting more mature, or at least older; I also didn’t wear orange – OR black and tan (celebrating the English half of my heritage there).
Yeah, I’m voting for “older,” too. If I was mature, I wouldn’t be so annoyed that a lot of people equate “Irish” with “helplessly drunk.” There ARE Irish who don’t drink, and the ones who do may get drunk, but they’re not helpless.
“Shut up, leprechauns” is going on the blue t-shirt I am wearing next St. Patrick’s Day.
@Lynne : me too! Totally want that on a shirt.
I went for a 10k run , avoided the city centre , and rewarded myself with a glass of red wine. I’m firmly in the getting older camp.
Oh! One other thing: the trick to cooking cabbage and avoiding the smell? Don’t boil it!
Cook it in a hot skillet (with a little olive oil) for only a couple of minutes, until it just starts to wilt. I like mine fairly crunchy, but you can cook it a wee bit longer if you don’t. Hot and fast: no funk.
@ Dierdre – Oh, I totally get that everyone who isn’t Irish pretending they are Irish could be quite annoying to those who actually are Irish. I am not Irish, nor do I pretend to be on March 17th. For me it was just another Tuesday to go to work. (I did wear green though – there are plenty of “pinchers” in my neck of the woods.) I just wanted to point out the Robbie Burns celebration at my favorite brew pub.
Although, to be honest, if they have the legs for it, I have no problem with men in kilts, whether it’s “ancestrally correct” or just a fashion choice.
I had honestly never heard of the pinching thing before this week, people actually do that? When I was a kid we got green bagels at school, wore fake green carnations, and my mom made corned beef and cabbage. That was it.
Aside from one group of drunk college girls on the T (I’m guessing they went to BU), I managed to avoid any morons yesterday. Those girls were getting the stink-eye from all directions. It made me somewhat proud of my fellow Bostonians. At least those of us on that particular train.
@FloridaErin: I saw the John Oliver segment. That was hilarious, all the more so because he “thought” they were protesting AIG.
First of all, Mardi Bragh Beads=Classic.
I never knew there was a certain shade of green you had to wear! My mom used to make us construction paper four leaf clovers to safety pin on our shirts for St Patricks (she also made hearts for Valentine’s day and Easter eggs for Easter) and that helped us avoid the dreading pinching (but you had to wear your coat unzipped so the clover was on prominent display.) Other than that we never did a lot of celebrating of our Irish heritage, which is odd because there’s a lot of Irish in our family.
Oh, and I grew up in Burns, Oregon, named for the illustrious poet. If you’d mentioned that to the locals, however, let alone offered a plate of haggis, you’d get naught but blank looks/punched in the face.
I have to admit, I hadn’t heard of that whole “pinching” business before, either; nor, of course, the fact that you’re entitled to punch someone who pinches you in error. The “And now, on Action News …” potential of drunks, pinchers, and people with really good reflexes who are not familiar with this way of observing St. Patrick’s Day is a little mind-boggling. I would love to know some more about this, actually – does anyone have any more information about where this evolved, and what the rules are?
P.S. If you don’t like corned beef OR cabbage, it’s perfectly OK to celebrate with potatoes, in any form. Every night, if you like!
I moved to Murray Hill at the end of last summer, so this was my first St. Patrick’s Day in the neighborhood. I’ve been dodging drunk frat-types in green since Hoboken St. Pat’s Day (March 7th, for God’s sake!!). I’m so glad they’re gone now.
Best thing ever (NOT): Having my psych final on St. Patrick’s Day, and having to ride the bus there, last-minute cramming, while some beer-reeking drunk dude was yelling about how he was going to “PARTY, WHORES” and loudly speculating about how he would love to pinch the sexy ladies on the bus if only they hadn’t worn green. AT 4 IN THE AFTERNOON.
It’s the only holiday I actively hate, I think. Glorification of binge drinking and subsequent gross behaviour + use of peer-pressure bullying to force people to wear a colour that looks hideous on nearly everyone = ugh.
Late as usual…
I’m glad St. Patrick’s is over because now the urination-themed ads in the free weeklies I read are also over. Free beer until someone goes to the bathroom, drink until you urinate in technicolor, etc. Also, no more NPR DJ’s trying to be cool by taking requests about hangovers.
At my junior high and high school, not only was the punching/pinching if you neglected to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day thing in effect (though it was rural Ohio with like 99% German heritage and 1% Mexican – no idea…) but there was also a year-round thing where wearing green on Thursdays meant you were horny and subject to public mocking. March 17, 1983, was therefore a terrible day for my shy, never-been-kissed, huge nerd freshman self.
Shamrock shakes are spearmint, I believe. I love them. I remember when they introduced them in 1975 or so. Anybody remember McDonald’s Arctic Orange shakes? I can’t remember if they were just orange, or orange and mint.
As an actual, born-and-raised-in-Ireland Irish person, can I just say:
a) What the fuck, “St Patty’s Day”? Don’t adopt nicknaming familiarity if you don’t even know how to shorten the word “Patrick”!
b) What the fuck, pinching people for not wearing green? I’ve never heard that before in my life.
c) What the fuck is “kelly green”?
d) As someone pointed out above, corned beef and cabbage is Irish-American, not Irish. I’ve never met an Irish person who’d eaten corn beef and cabbage — I’ve never even seen corn beef expect in pictures.
Amateur drunks is fucking right. I don’t leave my house on the 17th of March.
It makes me lol and lol that 160 million Americans think they’re Irish. People, my country had a population of 8 million at its ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM and at most 2 million of them emigrated. YOU CANNOT ALL BE IRISH. Put down the green beer.
(St Patrick’s Day makes me curmudgeonly.)