Saint Patrick: The Saint of Drunken Debauchery

Back in March, when St. Patrick’s Day actually happened (oh yes, I will catch up with past events some day – perhaps if I wait long enough they will become current events again…like fashion…), people were asking me if they actually celebrate this great day of drinking in Ireland, or if it is just a US manifestation like green beer.

As it turns out Saint Patrick is simply a patron saint of Ireland and Saint Patrick’s Day is a feast day celebration to commemorate his death. So, they do celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and boy do they ever! The day has evolved into a celebration of all things Irish and, since drinking is the most Irish thing they can think of, drinking is what you do on St. Patrick’s Day. It is even a national holiday. Just think…no need to call in a sick day with a hang over because you already have an extra day off. That’s thinking ahead!

There is a big parade through Dublin for the celebration and it’s just filled with…Americans… It seems often enough the Irish take the opportunity to travel to Boston and walk in their parade, and all of the Irish Americans come over and walk in Dublin’s parade. I keep missing the parade (I’m not a big parade type of guy), so I don’t know if it’s worth seeing or not. Most locals would skip it, considering it primarily a tourist attraction. The weather is almost guaranteed to be awful (typically they say you get four seasons in one day on St. Patty’s – sun, snow, rain, hail…everything), so that’s another reason not to venture out in it.

No, most Dubliners would find a good pub to park themselves in for the majority of the day. No green beer, no green dyed rivers, and most Irish would just as soon pummel the first smart a** punk they see dancing down the street in a Leprechaun costume (this does happen…a lot). This makes Saint Patrick’s Day not all that different from any other day in Ireland. It’s still drinking, but it’s drinking for a reason, and you get the day off work, so you can get to the pub earlier. Tourists though…lots and lots of tourists…

This is not unlike how I spent my St. Patty’s: Sitting in a pub…all…day…long… As it turns out I was there for different reasons than most. There is a Rugby tournament in the spring called the “Six Nations Championship” which involves six European nations (England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales) vying for the title of six nations champion. This year there were three games playing, one after the other, on St. Patty’s, and Ireland was essentially tied for the championship with France. This made for a pretty exciting group of matches, so I met up with a few friends from work (mostly Australians and Irish this time) and we watched those matches…all day long…

In order to win this tournament, it’s not just based on your record. In fact, the teams’ records are actually a secondary qualifier. What really matters is each team’s point total for the season (actually the total number of points that each team exceeds it’s opponents score by). These would be the last three matches of the season, so this was effectively the championship, though Ireland and France weren’t actually playing each other and at the end of the day, the team with the highest point total would be crowned champion.

To make a long story short, Ireland played in the first game and just crushed their opponent, beating them by a ridiculous margin of points. It was thought that this would too great a margin for France to overcome…but it wasn’t. France played the second match and scored enough points (crushing their opponent as fantastically as Ireland had done previously) to put them just two points ahead of Ireland to win the championship. You could have cut the suspense with a knife. Very exciting stuff, but ultimately the ending was a let down. The third game was between Scotland and England, so everyone was rooting for Scotland to defeat the English, which they did, but it wasn’t enough to lift everyone’s spirits after that slim defeat to France.

To finish off the night, the World Cup Cricket match between Ireland and Pakistan was on (the one that the Pakistani coach died after). The Ireland cricket team is very new, this only being their second year in international play (or something like that), but they actually had a shot to beat Pakistan, which was one of the best teams in the world. As we watched, one of my Ausie work mates explained the game to me (Australia is big into Cricket) and after an hour or so of watching I came to the conclusion that Cricket tops out Baseball for most boring sport ever… There is more scoring in Cricket, but the games are similar, and Cricket lasts ALL DAY LONG…and those are the short matches…

This would probably not be considered a typical Saint Patrick’s day because of all the sport. Last year when we were over we were out with a different group and hit up a few different pubs before heading off to a dance club. Almost everyone got completely locked (drunk out of there minds), and Mariah and I turned in early at 4am. This would probably be more typical for an Irish St. Patty’s celebration…but then again, people do this every weekend here.

In conclusion, the Irish definitely celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, but it’s definitely more exciting for the tourists than it is for the Irish. It’s kind of like a bachelor’s party (stag party here): It’s not really for the groom; it’s for everyone else.