Dan's guide to: St Patrick's Day
St Patrick's Day is almost upon us. In fact it may be even closer than you realise. This year, St Patrick's Day has been moved to Saturday to prevent it clashing with Holy Week. Luckily, nobody pays a blind bit of notice to what the Catholic Church says anymore so the general festivities will go ahead as usual on Monday.
Perhaps it was with the Church's dwindling influence in mind that the president of the Irish Hotels' Federation, Matthew Ryan, recently called for Easter to be a fixed date so we might avoid this catastrophe in the future. Will the Vatican bow down under the might of the Irish Hotels' Federation and change a tradition that dates back to 325AD? It certainly would alleviate the problems of "forward planning, budgeting, cost control and general efficiency," that Mr Ryan has highlighted -- and allow us all to plan two separate weekend package breaks in any of the fine hotels and guesthouses dotted around the country.
But today's column is about St Patrick's Day. So what do we know about the man in question? Like our Academy Award-winning actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, St Patrick was British. He reportedly lived from 373 to 493AD. In that short lifetime (120 years for those not paying attention) he managed to convert this entire island to Christianity and banished all the snakes. Admittedly, the second part of this mission was probably considerably easier than the first, considering no snakes ever lived here.
One and half thousand years later and St Patrick's Day has become our national day of drinking and debauchery. But how did St Patrick's Day change from a holy day of obligation, honouring our patron saint, to arguably the biggest piss-up of the year? When I was a kid and forced by my parents to give up sweets for Lent, St Patrick's Day was the one day I was allowed to gorge myself on sweets. Is the revelry on St Patrick's Day a throwback to when it was more common for Irish people to abstain from alcohol for Lent, but allowed themselves this one day to cut loose? That wouldn't really explain the scale of drinking that takes place around the world from Montreal to Montserrat, from Munich to Moscow. More likely it's because St Patrick's Day became a day for the Irish diaspora, scattered to the four corners of the globe, to remember what it means to be Irish -- paradoxically, by getting so drunk that they forget the day entirely.
Another staple of the holiday is the St Patrick's Day parade. My lasting memory of being dragged along to the Dublin parade every year was nearly being smothered by the fumes of the various dilapidated floats, seemingly for hours on end, and being driven demented by the repeated mantra of their sponsor over the floats' speaker systems, "A-T-A ... Security!" (Why were 90pc of the floats sponsored by a security firm?)
The highlight of the parade was when the Superquinn float would pass and there was the threat of a free cocktail sausage. These days, the parade is a lot more impressive and instead of one day of festivities we have five, including everything from Irish language and culture workshops to a Baby Rave. The latter is just that by the way -- a rave for babies, "complete with DJ, lighting, projections and sensory floor coverings."
Not content with exposing our impressionable kids and teenagers to the daytime drunken revelry on the streets, we are now encouraging babies to take an early interest in underground club culture.
Don't worry if you can't make it to the various events. The festival's online store is offering the chance to own a piece of the day immortalised forever in clear plastic. St Patrick's Festival and Dublin City Council are collaborating with artist Justin Gignac, who spends his nights scouring the streets of New York for the perfect trash, then carefully arranges his finds in clear plastic cubes. Justin will produce a limited edition of 100 of his famous cubes from the St Patrick's Festival Parade.
Given the God-awful mess that usually lines the streets of Dublin after a typical St Patrick's Day, I'm guessing my cube will be home to an empty can of Dutch Gold, some cigarette butts, a squashed Shamrock Shake cup and a large helping of vomit. I can't wait. n
askdan@independent.ie
http://irishpartylad.bebo.com
- Dan
