Celebridade

When I was growing up and well into my early twenties, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day in a way that would be wholly unrecognizable to what we see these days. In my day, the day was spent actually honoring St. Patrick and Ireland. There was a special mass, we said our prayers, we cooked a special meal, and then all of the men would meet down at the local watering hole and knock back a few while telling stories about our forefathers. We certainly didn't get sick on green beer and wear outrageous Irish t-shirts.

If the change had happened suddenly, the Irish community would have been in an uproar and would have never let it happen. Saint Patrick's Day would still be the holiday I knew in my younger years. It was a much more insidious shift, though. One year the pub has a few extra kids in it, laughing and carrying on. Before you know it, all of the beer is green and there are silly Irish shirts everywhere you look.

If these kids were actually honoring the Irish people and our heritage, then I would be willing to let the debauchery and craziness slide. Most of these kids only celebrate the holiday as a cartoonish version of what it was meant to be. Their drinking Irish tshirts are nothing but offensive caricatures of what the holiday is all about. Most of them aren't even Irish, for goodness sake! All of the leprechauns and shamrock business is just offensive to me.

All I need is for one of these ignorant youths in their cheap Irish t shirts to just sit down with me, have a pint of dark beer, and talk about what it means to be an Irish descendant in America. I just want one of them to show some interest in learning about the pain and burden my ancestors bore for this country. When one of them does that, I will gladly embrace this newer and more inane version of the holiday I have always held so dear to my Irish heart.

I know you've read this article and are thinking that I'm the most ornery man on the planet. Well, I don't sit on my front porch and yell at kids to get off my front lawn. I just want the homeland of my people honored like it should be, and those silly Irish tees just don't cut it. It also needs to be mentioned that once I'm good and toasted on Saint Patrick's Day, I tend to care a lot less about what shirts people are wearing and how young they are. After a few pints, everyone is Irish on Saint Patrick's Day.