Our demented teabagger governor has signed the emergency bill that will allow bars in Maine to open early on St. Patrick Day, the emergency seems to be it falling on Sunday this year. As he has declared that he will hold all other bills hostage until he gets his way on a bill involving using the funds from the state alcohol contract and paying off the state debt to hospitals, this bill apparently was enough of an emergency that it overrides his tantrum on that topic.
I have always hated the American way of observing St. Patrick Day, getting drunk, having obnoxious "roasts" and otherwise doing anything but honoring St. Patrick's life, in the slim detail we know that in. The American observance would be more fitting for a day dedicated to his foe, Coroticus, who he excommunicated , than the modest "unlearned sinner" he more than once described himself to be.
Patrick had been enslaved in Ireland for six years before he escaped and returned home where he studied to become a priest. His intention was to return to convert the Irish to Christianity. From his experience of slavery he became among the first, if not the actual first, effective abolitionist, convincing the Irish to give up slavery. Only that would make him an important figure in the history of civil rights and justice, earning him veneration. That is the tradition of St. Patrick that is real and not based in absurd myths, that is what is worth remembering about him. St. Patrick day as a day of anti-slavery activity is something I could get behind with the greatest enthusiasm.
St. Patrick Day, American style, is a celebration of the opposite. I've written before about my brother dying from alcoholism, which makes all of the alcohol based revelry seem a bit other than jolly. As an atheist, my brother's most often resorted to excuse to not try Alcoholics Anonymous was his unwillingness to put himself in the hands of a "higher power". It is frequently echoed in the pseudo-leftist blogosphere when the topic of AA comes up. So while rejecting what he saw as slavery to a God he didn't believe in, he put himself in the hands of the ethanol molecule. He, as the disease took over him, became the devoted servant of alcohol, who couldn't get away from it. Driving to the liquor store to be there to join the others waiting in their cars for the 10:00 opening. Driving back to drink a half gallon of vodka sprawled on a couch in front of TV, almost every day for more than two years. I won't go into details about how he lived in those years except to say that it would match some of the worst descriptions in literature.
My brother liquidated his retirement in order to pay his bills and buy cheap vodka. My other brothers and I took that as a sign that he had resigned himself to dying before he would retire. He lost his job before he died. Alcohol enslaved him as completely as the worst slave holder could, it totally dominated his life, consuming him as it did. Having watched that as recently as the year before last, it kind of dominates my thinking on the early bar opening, the green beer, the drunken revelry and a bunch of Boston politicians obliged by dreary custom to do bad imitations of Dean Martin, making obnoxious jerks of themselves as they do. It's enough to make you ashamed of being Irish.
No comments:
Post a Comment