St. Patrick's Day Has Come Early. Why America Drinks For No Reason

March 17 is a "national" holiday. I say "national" because people still have work on it, but it's considered to be something that everyone celebrates in some regard. It is on this day that we all become Irish. Looking back at what I was taught growing up, St. Patrick's Day was a day to celebrate an Irishmen who lifted the boundaries on the Catholic teaching and became an icon of sorts. So we celebrate in America because we are all Catholic? No, I'm mistaken. We celebrate it because we are all Irish. Nope, that doesn't sound right either. The real reason we celebrate it is because Americans are alcoholics and find it necessary to get hammered for no real reason.

Think about it. There appears to be one day in every month that we find a reason to get fucked up. In January, we have Martin Luther King Jr. Day, February has the Super Bowl, March has St. Patty's, April has my birthday, May has Cinco de Mayo (Mexican Independence), June has Flag Day, July has Independence Day, August has the end of summer day somewhere in there, September has Labor Day, October has Halloween, November has Thanksgiving, and December has Christmas or Hanukkah. There you have it. A run-down of all the reasons we find to drink as a country. Why?

Alcoholism. Mitch Hedburg once said, "Alcoholism is the only disease you can get yelled at for having." But let's be honest with ourselves. Deep down we are all a little bit alcoholics. Who's to say that a glass of wine or 2 with dinner is wrong? Or watching Legends of the Hidden Temple and having a drink every time Kirk Fogg touches a kid. It's okay to have a drinking problem, as long as you don't drive or beat the shit out of your partner, Chris Brown. Life presents some very difficult challenges and stresses, and sometimes the only way to alleviate it is with a drink. But you shouldn't get carried away.

Beerfest is a film that celebrates the kookiness and spontaneity of drinking. Games and chugging contests. What isn't fun about drinking? Nothing. Everything is fun. You get to make excuses for making out with ugly people or doing worse things. You get to throw up and/or dry-heave for a solid 5-10 minute ab workout. Heck, you can even find a reason to sleep-in the whole next day. Of course we find days to drink. Everything about it is great. Everything that is but the almighty hangover. How some freakshows never end up with one is beyond me, but maybe, just maybe one day, I'll figure out the mystery to end the hangover. It's more important than world hunger, in my opinion.

This weekend is going to be a real special one for me. I'm going to see some friends from college for the first time since I left their beautiful faces in May. Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine that it was that long ago. But time flies when you're unemployed and living at home. So I would like to take this time to thank Mr. St. Patrick for finding three-leaf-clovers and keeping the tradition of Catholicism alive and prevalent. Because without you Patty, us Americans would have to find another reason to get tanked. But I won't need another reason to tell you, "I am better than you."

***Photo courtesy of http://unrealitymag.com/wpcon

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