March is one of my least favorite months, but it’s not because of how it comes in like a lion—it’s drunks on St. Patrick’s Day that get me riled. How is one day enough to ruin an entire month?
I’m half-Irish: my mother is a first-generation American who grew up in the Bronx and yearned after Wonder Bread and Italian food. You’d think that I’d rejoice to celebrate a holiday that commemorates our heritage, especially, since my race is more “red” than “white.” But I can’t stand how on March 17 the bars fill up with drunkards and all of my friends challenge me to a whiskey battle.
Of course I can hold my liquor—it’s a genetic trait that’s been passed down from generation to generation. Ireland is fourth on the list of beer consumption per capita and approximately half of Irish men binge drink each week. My immigrant grandfather was an alcoholic, and so were five of my mother’s siblings before they hopped on the wagon. I’ve seen the ugly side of alcoholism and I’m ashamed that in the U.S. and especially New York City, we celebrate by drinking until we throw up.
Don’t get me wrong, I like to knock back a cold one; heck, I’m even ready to have a beer and shot of Jameson, just like Grampa used to at his pub in Woodlawn, in the Bronx, but it’s shameful to aggrandize a culture’s greatest weakness, especially when it’s so often the culprit of domestic abuse, poverty, and early death. I respect alcohol as a social drug, but in my opinion, there’s nothing worse for Ireland than the alcoholism that consumes my mother’s homeland.
Much like Cinco de Mayo, Americans have appropriated a traditionally cultural holiday and made it a day of drunkenness. Originally a feast day for celebrating Irish culture and the coming of Christianity to the Emerald Isle, today St. Patrick‘s Day has devolved into a drunken bacchanal of vomit, stink, and whiskey. Why not instead of getting wasted this St. Paddy’s day, you read some James Joyce or W.B. Yeats? Wear green and learn about the English colonialism on the tiny island, the near genocide and the potato famine caused by the Brits in order to keep the Irish down? Try eating boiled potatoes, corned beef and cabbage, or make a shepherd’s pie and top it off with a Guiness. If you’re really in the mood, have another! But please do an Irishman a favor and don’t get drunk.
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