I hate St. Patrick’s Day. There’s something about it that sets my teeth on edge. At the briefest flash of green, I see red. At the merest burr of a fake brogue, my bile rises. “Tap a the mairnin’ ta ya!” Somehow, it’s always the top of the morning, even well into the day. Let me say that 2:00 in the afternoon is the top of jack squat.
Part of it is the inconsistency of it all. Take the man himself: Patron Saint of Ireland, as well as engineers and paralegals, though those last two don’t come up all that often. He’s best known for his Irishness, his comparison of the Christian trinity to the shamrock, and his longtime association with the colour green. But, actually, no, he was likely from Wales, no, that came later… and, most damningly, no, it was blue. How keen are you for a holiday replete with blue beers and shirts that say “Kiss me I’m Welsh?”
And then there is that bit of blarney about “driving all the snakes out of Ireland with a stick” thing. And not just the faulty logic of it – by the same token, you could boast that he rid Ireland of tarantulas, wallabies, and archaeopteryx. It’s more the baffling notion that this would be a good thing. I remember, as a kid, learning of this and protesting, “but what about the ecosystem?” Even at that tender age, David Suzuki had taught me that the displacement of any species has serious repercussions. Dick move, St. Patrick.
Here’s the stupid thing. I’m mostly Irish myself, with a proper Irish name to boot. My namesake is St. Brendan, patron of travelers, sailors and whales, though that last one doesn’t come up all that often. But it’s a sham sort of Irishness – I’ve never needed to be anything but Canadian, and there’s no part of me that yearns for the Old Sod. And there’s no day in the year that I feel less Irish than on St. Paddy’s, when the yawning span of time and distance from there to here seems vast and inhospitable. If I am a traveler of a sort, I’m one without a way back home.
One year on March 17, I was out, downtown, with a friend of mine. He has a namesake, too: St. Stephen, patron of coffinmakers, deacons and headaches, though that last one doesn’t come up all that often. And if I am incidentally Irish, Steve is unmistakably so. In all the “Irish for a day” hoo-ha, he sees this twisted parody of who he is and where he’s from. And so we get an idea – our entire walk home, we wouldn’t wish a single person a “Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” because you know what, screw ‘em.
We darted around a gaggle of girls and wished them a Merry Christmas. We saw an old guy leaning on a fence, and we wished him a Happy Easter. It’s around here we started getting fancy. Have a patriotic Canada Day! Have a Spooktacular Halloween! As we’re nearing home, we came across a bunch of guys and wished them a “Happy Hanukkah.” And one of them, a guy wearing a white baseball cap with a shamrock-covered stovepipe on top of it, decided that that wasn’t kosher. He stopped dead in his tracks and shouted “Man, fuck Hanukkah!”
I was ready to let Hanukkah take one for the team. But Steve thought it over for a second, and decided differently. He thrust his chin out, and said “Whaddaya mean, fuck Hanukkah? Fuck you.” Understand that I’m not a fighter. I’m not much of a lover either. I’m what’s known as a bleeder. In those moments, I was the Patron Saint of Actually These Guys Are Pretty Big and Maybe We Can Pretend It Was All a Joke. I remember being seized by two thoughts.
1. We were inches away from throwing down to avenge the besmirched honour of The Festival of Lights.
2. What sort of a jerk wears a hat on top of a hat, anyway?
But just as quick as it started, it dispersed – there were a few rough shoves as we elbowed past, but nobody took the first swing. We moved on, and they drifted drunkenly down the street, looking for their next target. The day was saved for Hanukkah, and the cadre of bros thugged ever onward, fueled by the raw belligerence that they thought came with being Irish for a day.
It’s things like that that gut the day for me, that sour those green beers and plastic hats into something stupid and coarse and crude. So I lay low these days, and grump silently. But not forever –some St. Patrick’s Day, I’ll figure that enough is enough. I have it on good authority that my namesake is also the Patron Saint of Being Just Plain Done with Bullshit (it just doesn’t come up a lot).
Someday, I’ll pull a stunt that will put St. Patrick to shame. Forget snakes, because what did snakes ever do to anybody? Someday I’ll find me a great big stick, and a great big pan to bang it on. And I’ll chase all the green-hatted assholes out of town.
Happy Hanukkah, everyone.
