Going green

Most of you are probably thinking I'm going to go off on one of my ecological tangents, ranting on about how we're raping, pillaging, and plundering the environment, how our obsession -- no, addiction -- to fossil fuels is going to be our undoing as a species, how climate change (regardless of what the non-science whackos might think) is turning all of us into dinosaurs, and how heating the oceans, filling them with garbage and poisoning our freshwater aquifers is less than intelligent, but I'm not. Why would I want to do a thing like that? That's something for every day of the week, but not today. Today's a non-holiday! It's time again to celebrate for absolutely no reason at all.

Yes, today's St. Patrick's Day and all across America, and increasingly throughout the world, people are taking the day to put on something green (well, except for some pretty broomstick-up-the-butt types in Northern Ireland ... but, hey, there are party-poopers everywhere ... and how can you poop with a broomstick up your butt? ... uh, another story), put on their buttons that say "Kiss me, I'm Irish" when they've never likely seen, let alone even, owned as much as an Irish setter, and Boston will turn the Charles River green (with something other than chemical sludge, though maybe not as healthy) and Chicagoans will drink green (literally) beer (whereby elsewhere in the civilized world "green beer" is simply unaged beer, but that's another story too).

What's the big deal? Given the recent fascination with Catholic scandals and the Pope resigning, I can't begin to imagine it's some deep and secret desire to revere the fellow who is Ireland's patron saint because he drove all the snakes off the Ireland. I'm sure if you ask a true Irishman or Irishwoman, for that matter, they'll tell you there have been snakes on the island all along, but none of them were native Irish anymore. Or, is it that we're guilty about what we're doing to the environment? No, no, don't get anxious ... I'm not sneaking off on a tangent, I'm only asking the question. I'd find that a difficult one to believe anyway. Why is it then that hard-working, Puritan descendants (to a great extent, either physically or culturally) would want to celebrate the arrival of Christianity in Ireland? Don't get me wrong, folks, anyone and everyone who celebrates for precisely these reasons has my full and total support. I'm wondering more about all the merry makers. The loud ones.

On the one hand, it is the one day during Lent when the ban on sacrifice is lifted. Whatever you might have given up for Lent, whatever fasting you may be doing, you don't have to do today. What is more, the Irish are known world wide as a light-hearted people. If you don't believe me, leave America, travel anywhere in the world and find your way to an Irish pub (there's no major city on the planet without one) and you'll find a warm, welcoming, friendly atmosphere, where you're expected more than allowed to laugh, and where it's fair game to make fun (or take the mickey out) of just about anything or anyone you please.

No, if you ask me, St. Patrick's Day is to spring, what Halloween is to fall: one of those "holidays" we have no real idea about, other than someone at sometime somewhere celebrated it, and since they both occur in the middle of a dry stretch, are all the more reason to get simply loosen up a bit. OK, I think I get it. Cheers!