Why is St. Patrick's day focused mainly on consuming mass quantities of booze?

Because slapping leprechauns is against the law!!

Are you complaining about this?

It is written “To those who celebrate its intended meaning, St. Patrick’s Day is a traditional day for spiritual renewal and offering prayers for missionaries worldwide. Most Irish citizens attend mass followed by an evening of traditional Irish food and drink.” here – clearly to many Americans ‘spiritual renewal’ means ‘alcohol consumption’.

If it sounds like I’m complaining, I am not. It’s a peculiar tradition where people en masse will start drinking in the AM on a work day. Surely the tradition couldn’t have started that way.

Surely it’s not! It’s also about consuming mass quantities of green bagels (when else would you eat a green bagel, anyway?), corned beef and cabbage (ditto cooked cabbage).

The mass quantities of alcohol mean that we’ve passed the Ides of March by two whole days. w00t

Because the Irish consume a lot of alcohol. I’m not being “racist”, it’s true. God created alcohol to stop the Irish from ruling the world. :)

St. Patrick’s Day is associated with drinking because it originally started as a one-day break from Lent, which was characterized by fasting and no drinking. So St. Patrick’s Day was a time to let loose. This dates back as far as the 1600s.

Believe it or not, in 1903, there was a law in Ireland to close pubs on March 17th because drinking would get too out of hand. That was repealed later, but it has been associated with drinking for a long time and is not just an “American” thing. It was in the 1990s when the Irish decided to make March 17th a day to show off Irish culture to the rest of the world.

Its just another “holliday” excuse to get wasted, Most people don’t know the true meaning of st. patricks day but I believe in Ireland it’s celebrated the same.

Because like all holidays nowadays it is an excuse to get shit faced. Rather than what ever your suppose to be celebrating but bring alcohol, a random holiday excuse and life is dandy for the moment!

The true meaning of most holidays elude me to @Captain_Fantasy it eludes me too…..“Great question” sir.

@Lothloriengaladriel But what holiday isn’t celebrated by getting drunk in Ireland?

@dverhey Ramadan?

The Irish drink a lot, a slow-dying cultural inheritance from the era of British oppression. On St. Patrick’s Day everyone is Irish, so everyone drinks alot. Hating the British is optional.

@stump Deja vu eh….must be a glitch in the Matrix shit….

The Irish Drink, the Italians and Jews eat, what can I tell you.

I think @DominicX had a great answer.

@stump – only optional eh? LOL

I don’t know when it started, but all the pubs on the run up to toda,y advertise all kinds off offers to get us in the pub.

1916

Because it had been a while since New Year’s.

Well my family is Irish and I am second generation Irish here in the states. Hardly anyone in my family drinks (excluding myself) and we see St. Patricks Day as something to snicker at really. Look at all the novices we say. St. Patricks Day is really a day at the bar for rookies who want to be part of a culture they probably no nothing about. At least the Irish don’t take offense to it, if we did you’d all have a real problem on your hands when you ordered a “green beer.”
As far as the stereotypes go, sure it is safe to assume the Irish drink and the Italians eat and the Jews eat but is it safe to stereotype black people in the month of Febuary during black history month? I mean, you don’t all head out and order fried chicken and watermelon on Fridays do you? It’s all just kind of silly and I am sure that many of you so called PC folks would assume that to be racist.
St. Patricks Day is a religious holiday, how many of you are religious that celebrate this day?
How many of you will actually eat cabbage and bacon today? It is the traditional meal for this day.
Either way, St. Patrick’s Day was first celebrated in the states among Irish in NYC.
Eat a potato, that is why many of us are here in the USA anyway…..
*“The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill.”
– Harold Nicolson”*

@judochop This is what Americans do to these type of celebrations. It is just like Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican’s laugh at how we celebrate it. About the religious part of the day, another thing America does, think bunnies and chocolate and painted eggs, Santa and decorated trees. Oh yeah…Jesus’ birth resurection, almost forgot.

It is very NYC to me for a group to celebrate a day to represent them, a day of pride. NYC continues to have parades, like the Puerto Rican day parade, Gay pride, and more.

Your point is reasonable about watermellon and chicken regarding black history month. Did you see that people were all upset about a menu created at NBC for black history month, everyone was in an uproar, and then it was found out the woman who planned the woman was black. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/04/nbc-serves-fried-chicken_n_449821.html

Now, yesterday on my facebook an Irish friend said that she had troble finding a beef stew recipe without beer in it for St. Patricks day. Another friend of hers, Irish, got all defensive saying the Irish are not all a bunch of drunks. Oy. I can understand why she might be defensive, but seems better just to fun of the day andnot get caught up in the details maybe.

@JLeslie Yeah we should just forget about the details all together, your right. Details are stupid.
I am not offended. But just as the Mexicans laugh at us for Cinco, most of the Irish laugh at your green beer. It does not mean that it is going to change anything. Hell, I like the fact that there is a holiday centered around my culture.
Comparing St. Patrick’s Day to Christmas and Easter and Jesus’ resurrection though? I don’t really get it.
St. Patrick’s Day is a Christian holiday, not catholic.
Also, your friend that can’t find a stew without beer is looking on seasonal websites written by people with the last name of Smith and Berstien, etc….None of my grandmothers recipes have beer in them, not that it would matter anyway. Cooking with beer does not mean the when you eat it you will get drunk.

@CyanoticWasp Touche.

@judochop I meant that these holidays are driven by commercialism not by their original meanings. I just wrote on another thread that I would venture to say that it is not the Irish who have turned America’s St. Patrick’s day into what it has become, but capitalism more than anything.

@judochop I wanted to add that I think it is a good idea to know the original or real meaning behind a holiday, we should not forget that I think. We can do both.

@JLeslie We should go have a beer later.

@judochop I don’t drink. LOL. I’m Jewish, I eat.

I ran out of money so was unable to binge drink the day away, what a waste of a day, instead I slept till 4:30 in the afternoon, polished off the coco puffs, and sat about wishing I was tanked.

Why? Why not? If it’s generally acceptable to be piss drunk today, I’m going to take advantage of it, I kind of enjoy being drunk.

What, in my neighborhood, everyone decorates their houses with green balloons and strings green lights on their houses, and puts green window decorations all over their windows, and plants giant green foam four leaf clovers along their sidewalks, and hangs green streamers from their banner poles. There’s not that much drinking around here. I even see cars with green decorations in their windows, and green flags.

St. Patrick’s Day is basically “amateur night” for beer drinkers. The pro’s know that waiting 30 minutes in a pub packed to the gills with sweaty drunk people for a $9 beer served in a plastic boot, sucks ass.

True, Americans tend to drink on this day to excess, but the fact that you have to call in sick at least shows some sense of: A. Being responsible enough to have a job, and; B. Calling in when you are not going to be there. Lest the Brits blame it all on us Yanks, hey, you invented the pub crawl. And when you’re saluting the sidewalk, there are absolutely no shamrocks to look for, or rainbows with a pot of anything as a reward.