When St. Patrick’s Day comes up in conversation, two things come to mind: beer and green.
Festivals, parades and parties celebrating the patron saint of Ireland will take place nationwide on March 17 – a celebration sure to include tons of alcohol.
According to WalletHub, around 13 million pints of Guinness will be consumed worldwide on St. Patrick’s Day this year.
Even if Guinness doesn’t suit one’s fancy, the average American participating in St. Patrick’s Day events will spend around $40 on alcohol. According to 2012 estimates, beer brewers took in $245 million on St. Patrick’s Day alone.
This nation needs to relax when it comes to drinking on St. Patrick’s Day. Remember the holiday is commemorating the life of a saint, so follow his example and don’t be a drunken idiot this St. Patrick’s Day.
The holiday has come to rank fourth among the calendar’s most popular drinking days right behind New Year’s Eve, Christmas and Independence Day as reported by a study by BACTrack, a breathalyzer production company.
The holiday has become synonymous with heavy drinking, when there’s really no reason for it to be.
The holiday was first-observed as religious by the Irish — a time to visit church or be with family but as the tradition of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day made its way to the United States, the holiday became fairly secular and has now involved large amounts of alcohol.
St. Patrick’s Day was initially a religious feast day held to remember the great feats of St. Patrick, who, according to legend, converted hundreds of Irish pagans to Christianity using only a three-leaf clover.
According to legend, the clover was useful in properly explaining the trinity doctrine of Christianity.
The reason as to how the holiday became so alcohol-centric is curiously tied to the Catholic period of fasting known as Lent.
St. Patrick’s Day, celebrated on the day of St. Patrick’s death, came during Lent. Lent is a period where observant Catholics fast or give something of importance up in an effort to become closer to God. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday each year and culminates 40 days after.
The holiday was viewed as a sort of “day off” from Lent by the Irish Catholics, a time to indulge on food and alcohol in remembrance of the the patron saint.
As the Irish began drinking more and more on this holiday, drinking a pint for the saint soon became a tradition and important part of the day for many.
But America took things to the next level with alcohol.
According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study, approximately 75 percent of drivers involved in St. Patrick’s Day DUI cases and drunken car accidents are two times over the legal limit.
St. Patrick’s Day’s origin has serious religious undertones but nowadays, those undertones seem to be completely ignored. Most Americans probably don’t even know who St. Patrick is or what he did — they just know that March 17 is a time to wear green, claim Irish ancestry, and get hammered.