We’ve got Tony and Mushmouth for this one.
I made it to 2:30. I think I’m good.
But this is the big St Patrick’s Day episode. When is St Patrick’s Day? Did I miss it?
Oh, no. It’s tomorrow. So today, when you’re reading this. So this is timely.
Nobody talks about St Patrick’s Day in the UK. At least not in England or Scotland. It doesn’t exist. Nobody gives a shit.
This is particularly noteworthy in Scotland, which has a large population of people of Irish descent, particularly in Glasgow. You know how British people will mock Americans for claiming to be Italian or Irish or whatever because they might have had an Italian or Irish great-grandmother or something? They do the same fucking thing in Scotland. People who have never been to Ireland, have no connection with Ireland, but have an Irish granny will claim to be Irish. Why? You’re Scottish, you fucking retard.
They have these marches in Glasgow. It’s a group called the Orange Order. It’s a quasi-fascist group of low-lifes who go around town beating drums and, at least historically, harassing Catholics (who were overwhelmingly people of Irish descent). The Orange folk are Scottish Protestants. Not that anybody in the UK goes to church or any of that shit, but they identify as Protestants.
So they march through town and bang their drums and it’s a nuisance.
They do the same thing in Northern Ireland. And it’s obvious that these Orange people are complete assholes. At least when they’re doing it in Northern Ireland. Because they’re celebrating British domination over Ireland in that sense.
But with these marches in Glasgow, these Orange assholes kind of have a point. It’s an anti-Irish march, of course. But the “Irish” people in Glasgow aren’t really Irish. It’s the same fucking bullshit that you see in the US where somebody who’s 12.5% Norwegian will claim to be Norwegian. If you’re so proud of being “Irish”, go “back” there. See what your fellow “countrymen” have to say. “What the fuck is this Scottish guy doing here?”
They have national days for every “country” in the UK. England has St George’s Day, Scotland has St Andrew’s Day, Wales has whatever the fuck they have. But again, nobody gives a shit. You don’t get the day off or anything like that. They don’t have a parade. As far as I’m aware, there’s no special shit going on at school.
But in the US, for whatever bizarre reason, St Patrick’s Day is a big thing. Why?
I look back and think why the fuck was this a holiday that I celebrated? We had to decorate the classroom with leprechauns and shamrocks. My mother made corned beef. Why were we doing this? My family wasn’t Irish AT ALL. Nobody at my school was remotely Irish. What the fuck was going on? How did this holiday get elevated so much in the US but things like St George’s Day are nowhere to be seen.
I know that there was a large wave of Irish immigrants, whatever, 200 years ago. But why is this still happening today?
Is there another example of a national holiday that’s popular in the US? I mean for a foreign country.
Cinco de Mayo, I guess. But that shit only seemed to take off in the 1990s. And the explanation is easy. A lot of Mexicans in the US. Real Mexicans. From Mexico. Recent immigrants. And that’s only celebrated by Mexicans, not the population at large, like St Patrick’s Day.
I’m looking at this list and no. There are no other holidays based on another country’s holiday other than St Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo. They also include Oktoberfest in this list but I have never heard of anybody celebrating that in the US. Not once.
Interestingly, German holidays used to be pretty big in the US. There are more people of German descent in the US than any other nationality, after all. More than English. More than Irish. Parents would teach their children German. The whole thing. But World War II but a damper on all of that.
I can maybe see people of Irish descent celebrating St Patrick’s Day. But why was I doing it? I don’t give a fuck about that bullshit story about driving snakes out of Ireland. Even if he did do it, who gives a shit? How does that guy driving the snakes out of Ireland help me, a kid living the US? And it had to have a huge ecological impact on the country. Should anybody be celebrating that? Man-created extinctions?
But you go to your fucking McDonald’s and order your Shamrock Shake, packed with cancer-causing chemicals.
In the sixth grade, we had to decorate anthropomorphic clovers. It was a clover and it had arms and legs and you had to draw him a face and whatever. The stem of the clover was between his legs. So after St Patrick’s Day, I remember my friend taking his clover down from the wall, by this time the clover was a little damaged, and him wiggling this stem. And he said, “Look at this. The ultimate torture” and he ripped the stem off. The stem obviously representing the character’s penis.
Anyway, I say fuck St Patrick’s Day. The only reason it still exists in the US is because people use it as an excuse to get drunk. If you’re a drunk, go get drunk whenever you want. We don’t need to set a whole day aside for you.