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Ahhhh... St Patrick's Day... definitely one of my top holidays.

There's just nothing quite as fulfilling as watching a historically religiousfigure actually be the namesake of one the largest parties in the world. In fact, the only truly religious point left in the whole day is the many misunderstood facts about it. But then again, a couple hundred years of binge drinking can make any memory more than a little blurry.
So here's a little refresher you can half commit to memory and then butcher later in a drunken argument.
St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) has been for thousands of years (in Ireland) a religious feast and the supposed anniversary of Senor Patty's death in the 5th century. Traditional Christian Lenten prohibitions were actually cast aside for the day and the Irish would get all crazy and toss back all the meat they wanted... usually the traditional bacon and cabbage... which makes me wonder why some sort of air freshening product was never introduced into the celebration.
But as Irish as the holiday is, the first parade actually took place in America in 1762 by Irishmen serving in the English military, and more to do with a celebration of their "Irishness" than it did any religious observance. In fact up until the time of the Great Potato Famine in 1845 most Irish immigrants were Protestants. The famine brought nearly a million Catholic Irish fleeing starvation. And they weren't exactly welcomed either... they were Mexican way before Mexican was Mexican, except they actually could NOT find work. It was a crazy time in this county... and because of the anti-Catholic Irish sentiment in this county, when March 17th rolled around newspapers and periodicals of the time portrayed them in cartoons as violent drunk monkeys... much like how newspapers portrayed the Japanese during WWII. Strange really... how every time in a period of our history cultural differences arise between the white Protestant based majority and anyone slightly different religiously, socio-politically, or ethnically the method for belittling and slandering them is always to invoke the monkey comparison... even though evolution is historically viewed as incorrect by the same being using it for its racial bias... which begs the question "When do we get the Terror Monkey cartoons?"

Well I think I've successfully gotten off topic.
Let's get back to the matter hand. Namely "why do we get hammered on March 17th'

Quite frankly it appears to be the one stereotype of the Irish that (despite its originally negative connotation) we've managed to embrace.
We constantly get the whole "he banished all the snakes out of Ireland" thing wrong... some people I've talked to even get it confused with the Pied Piper... like St Patty was tooting on a flute and snakes (who despite what the dude in Bangladesh may make you think) were entranced by his version of "hit the road jack" and did so. An obvious butchery of two stories and a complete lack of comprehension of one of the basic ingredients to all folklore and story telling: the metaphor.
Which is what the "banishing of snakes" is in the first place. There were never any serpents in Ireland. St Patrick's banishing of all the snakes in Ireland was a metaphor for the eradication of Paganism. (St Patrick was originally a Pagan himself who converted to Christianity and went to Ireland to spread Catholicism... and was rather successfully if you hadn't noticed.)
So we have a lot of misunderstanding around the Holiday. Leprechauns aren't real by the way, the clover is a symbol of spring (Pagan) and was later used as a symbol of pride in the face of British invasion and control, and it wasn't until 1995 that the Irish government abandoned the tradition laws and allowed Pubs to be open on the religious holiday so they could go all Parade and festival with it to increase tourism.

For a nation of people that invented that were almost wiped out by a tuber crop going to shit, perfected the car bomb (in not invent it all together), and have been trying to tell the British to fuck off since before James Madison learned to write... you really have to give them one thing: they can throw one hell of a party, even if it wasn't their intention.

So this St. Patrick's Day grab a shot of Jameson, turn up a pirated copy of Metallica's version of "Whiskey in Jaro," and demand gold from anyone you meet under 4 feet tall.

-Matt Davis