Tomorrow bein’ the only truly Irish holiday there be, tis time to do our livers some serious damage!
But seriously folks: a holiday commemorating a guy who chased non-existent serpents out of Ireland? Really?
It actually commemorates the arrival of Christianity in the Emerald Isle – why, the very thought of that makes me Irish soide want to down as much whiskey as is humanly possible, so as I can perish the thought.
And as history shows, the Holy Cee has done some sorry arse garbage while they had their grubby paws into the mix:
Catholic Church enslaved 30,000 Irish women as forced unpaid labor in Magdalene Laundries until 1996
What a horrific story. The Irish Prime Minister gave a partial apology today for the government’s role in a 74-year scandal in which, a new official government report says, over 10,000 women were forced to work without pay at commercial laundries called Magdalene Laundries, operated by the Catholic Church for “crimes” as small as not paying a train ticket.
Wikipedia notes that the estimate of the number of women who were used as forced slave labor by the Catholic Church in Ireland alone goes as high as 30,000 over the entire time the Magdalene laundries were in operation.
Read the entire article. It’s enough to curl the toe hairs. Sickening. The Catholic Church should make reparations for each person abused so horrifically – and that would bankrupt the pedophiliac slaver mongers.
I know that curses are manure, but here’s one I wish I could wish upon the bleedin’ papists:
May you find the bees but not the honey.
Sláinte!
Till the next post then.
“Till the next post then.”
Can’t be too soon!!!
As I understand it, it’s not senseless as many people (mostly Irish, or as they say to me on this holiday “everyone is Irish” for some reason, even though I haven’t a drop of Irish blood in me) use it as an excuse to get very drunk (and often cause trouble, like auto accidents). Though I don’t see how they can pin one day on getting excessively drunk. I guess it’s like Cabbage Night before Halloween: an excuse to vandalize. I just don’t know what makes a guy like this Patrick a “holy” person or saint…much less having a day every year to celebrate him.
I’m all for Irish people celebrating their heritage, though in their place, I wouldn’t want to be associated with widespread drunkenness. If I was the king of Holiday Island, I’d drop St. Patrick in light of what the church has been doing to them all this time and rename it as a secular holiday about Ireland’s secular culture. But there’s a lot of Catholic Irish who can’t bring themselves to separate those two aspects of their identity, since Catholicism has pretty much wormed its way into everything over the centuries.
It dawned on my rather aged brain on getting (it?) up this morning, in checking today’s date, that it’s another “St. Patrick’s” day. “Oy Vey?” Almost immediately I thought of my mom; who originally came over from Westport, County Mayo, Ireland in 1927(?)…and much later regretted it. If it wasn’t for her, of course,I’d never have been brainwashed from birth into Catholicism. My dad was a not very religious Lutheran Swede, who, in 1932 married my mom…and had to shed his somewhat weak Lutheranism to be re-baptized Catholic; otherwise…their marriage would not pass doctrinal ‘muster’…Yada-Zama.
For quite awhile in my younger days, I certainly did my best to live up to the old Irish drinking legend. Of course the Swedes ain’t exactly immune to that old traditional method of reaching for…shall we say…TOTAL oblivion!
“Glogg, glogg!” And, on that note:
http://amazingribs.com/recipes/drinks/glogg.html
I digress?…or is it “hic!” (like, in my long ago days)…”undress”?…
Another traditional BS item…which I remember first hearing about as a child…is that KA mentioned infamous crap about St. Patrick being responsible for there being “no snakes in Ireland”. We all know now, of course, that, Scientifically, in all probability there never WERE any snakes on the “Emerald Isle”; at least to any significantly traceable level. The so-called “snakes” were in reality a veiled reference to various pagan non-believers…or…
most probably the ancient “Druids”.
The latter (vaguely tangential) item brings to mind one of comedian Jackie Vernon’s jokes about someone being possibly considered to actually being a “Druid”. It came into play during one of his hilarious trademark “slideshow” presentations.
The punch-line was something similar to a commonly used analogy:
“Somehow I never thought he looked “Druish”.
As an aside; back in 1971 after an over 2 year stint with a lounge band’s final break-up , I worked for about 6 months as a multi-shift (fully uniformed/with requisite cab whistle) doorman at an apartment building in near-north downtown Chicago (100 E Bellevue, to be exact). Whilst there, Jackie Vernon, amongst other occasional celebs, came to visit a then prominent journalist/promoter tenant, Sig Sakowicz; at which time, in the lobby, I complimented Vernon, and repeated to him one of my favorite jokes of his, that I remembered from his Dean Martin Show appearance.
Anyway…pardon my tangential blabbing…?
Seriously…as KA proffered:
“Sláinte!” to all of you….
sober or not?
Here in NYC, while there may be a large religious component to events like the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the real undertone is an excuse for ethnic cheerleading and an opportunity for our local politicians to suck up to whatever religious or ethic group happens to be celebrating. It also provides a good excuse for all kinds of rowdy behavior