Mahdis Habibinia | Contributor
Featured Image: Many people no longer know what the original St. Patrick’s Day even celebrated. | Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Whether you’re Irish all year or just for one day, it’s a safe bet you will likely be at a pub this Saturday.
Nowadays, Saint Patrick’s Day seems to be the epitome of drinking traditions. But do most of us even know what it is we’re clinking our glasses of green Guinness for, exactly?
More commonly known as Saint Paddy’s Day, this Irish holiday has evolved over the years. What began as a religious feast day in the 17th century has been reworked into a myriad of festivals across the globe, celebrating Irish culture with parades, dancing, and a whole lot of green booze.
Today, Saint Paddy’s Day has become an event for students to party with friends, underlining an emphasis on drinking inordinate amounts of alcohol.
So, what does this day actually mean? What forms do its traditions take among students, and why? More notably—what does this say about our generation and other cultural holidays?
First and foremost: what do we really know about this holiday or its saint?
Like Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated on the anniversary of a saint’s death. Saint Patrick was the patron saint of Ireland, known best and celebrated for his role in the introduction of Christianity to Ireland, explains William Jenkins, an associate professor of Geography at York. After his ordination as a priest, Saint Patrick had a dual mission: to minister to Christians already living in Ireland, and to convert the Irish without eradicating native beliefs.
Perhaps the most iconic anecdote is his explanation of the Holy Trinity with the three-leaf clover—also known as the shamrock. But many of the stories traditionally associated with Saint Patrick are false.
This includes the famous recount about him banishing all of the snakes from Ireland—a production of hundreds of years of storytelling.
Since the ninth or tenth century, people in Ireland have been observing the Roman Catholic feast day of Saint Patrick on March 17. Interestingly enough, however, the first parade did not even take place in Ireland; it took place in the U. S. in 1762. Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City, explains Jenkins. The parade helped the soldiers reconnect with their Irish roots, as well as with fellow Irish soldiers serving in the English army.
Today, people of all backgrounds celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, especially throughout the U. S., Canada, and Australia. More often than not, however, the day is used as an excuse to indulge in excessive drinking.
Brett Sloan, a bartender at York’s Underground Campus Kitchen and fifth-year psychology student, shares his description of the day: “It’s considered a drinking holiday. An excuse to drink in the afternoon, like you would in the evening. A lot of people like to turn it into a full-day marathon.”
The answer as to why the cultural pride of the original holiday has turned into the drinking culture seen among today’s university students is multifaceted.
The Irish holiday first featured drinking when the church relaxed its restrictions for Lent, six weeks prior to Easter, enabling celebrants with the freedom to eat and drink.
“Historically, the public celebration of Saint Patrick comes more from the Irish abroad than from within Ireland itself.”
“In the 19th century, as mass migration from Ireland to North America gathered momentum, peaking during the era of famine (1847-1852), Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations became common in more cities (such as Montreal in 1829), and acquired a public dimension in the form of the procession,” Jenkins adds.
The famine was a turning point.
“Saint Patrick’s Day public processions now become a regular thing in many North American cities and occasions where public order is sometimes challenged through drinking.
“Given that the majority of Irish immigrants were Catholics that slotted into the lower reaches of the labour market and valued the social encounters in the public house (men, especially), the problem of public drunkenness on the day became real,” Jenkins continues.
The processions, in and of themselves, taking place already shed some light on the aspects of cultural pride. They were an important way of claiming public space, combatting discrimination against Catholics, and announcing that the Irish were in town, Jenkins adds.
In modern-day Ireland, Saint Patrick’s Day has traditionally been a cultural and/or religious occasion. Outside of Ireland, however, many youth seem to have taken Saint Paddy’s Day activities out of context.
Christopher Flynn, a fourth-year student of Irish descent, shares his own account of the holiday: “For me, I grew up celebrating Saint Paddy’s Day as a celebration of Irish independence from Britain.”
For Sloan and his family, “it’s basically a really low-key Thanksgiving—a celebration of my heritage,” he says.
Still, Saint Paddy’s Day seems to be a smaller deal within Ireland itself compared to other countries. Sloan explains that he “didn’t really drink during the holiday until he moved to Toronto.”
“Historically, the public celebration of Saint Patrick comes more from the Irish abroad than from within Ireland itself,” Jenkins says . In Ireland, there were no massive street celebrations or parades, and no occasions of widespread drunkenness.
Andrew Fraser, a retired librarian and historian, affirms this history with a more recent story: “I was in Ireland on Saint Paddy’s Day in 1987, and it’s not a very big deal there.
“I was told by my Irish friends I was staying with that it’s more of the Diaspora in Boston, New York, Toronto, Montreal, and other places that celebrate the day.”
Likewise, Jenkins further notes the day was fairly ordered and solemn, for the most part, growing up in the 1980s. There was Mass in the morning, and the parade in the Dublin city centre in the afternoon. “It did not stand out as a day when the party-meter stretched into overdrive,” he says.
In the last few decades, however, the celebrations have become more Americanized and exaggerated. Dying the Chicago River green and pushing the limits of our livers don’t exactly embody the way crowds “do it up” in Ireland, nor capture the original intentions of the holiday.
The Knights in the Order of Saint Patrick, in fact, wore a colour known as Saint Patrick’s Blue—not green.
“I have a lot of friends that have gone to Ireland for St. Paddy’s, and they said it’s a completely different world,” says Christian Salazar, bar manager at JOEY Yorkdale. “It gets absolutely crazy. Outrageous. But it’s only the tourists that get crazy—because they go there with this mindset that ‘Saint Patrick’s Day is crazy back in Canada. I can only imagine what it’s like in Ireland.’”
“I would be surprised if more than 10 per cent of students knew anything about the holiday. I assume the majority of students care less about the holiday itself, and more about booking the next day off of work to nurse their inevitable hangovers.”
In fact, during the 1970’s, Irish laws mandated pubs be closed on March 17 as a mark of respect for this religious day. They would only open later in 1995, when the Irish government would run a national campaign to use interest in Saint Patrick’s Day as a means for driving tourism and showcasing Irish culture to the rest of the world.
It’s what we’ve done with this showcase that is alarming. It seems that today, youths are less concerned with the traditional facets of the holiday altogether.
Instead, the norm has now become to don everything green, encourage the bombardment of booze, and mimic—thus, exaggerate—the supposed drinking abilities of the Irish.
So, in what forms do these evolved, 21st-century traditions manifest themselves?
Ryan Silver, a fourth-year Science and Technology student and former president of Alpha Epsilon Pi at York, affirms this popular activity: “I would be surprised if more than 10 per cent of students knew anything about the holiday. I assume the majority of students care less about the holiday itself, and more about booking the next day off of work to nurse their inevitable hangovers.”
Silver also says that fraternity chapters at York tend to throw Saint Paddy’s Day house parties and bar events. Often, they go to a “party school” for a Saint Patrick’s celebration. “My chapter has gone to Penn State, where they celebrate the holiday for a whole week. Otherwise, Laurier or Western are common destinations for the day,” says Silver.
Daniela Cas, a bartender at the Absinthe Pub and fifth-year History and English student, describes her experience of the holiday as “mostly a beer day” and “probably an excuse to drink.” The historical relevance has been taken out of it. Cas comments it is a good reason for “people to get together under the guise of comradery.”
Essentially it’s another pretext, on top of Thank God It’s Friday and Thirsty Thursdays, for a social outing—especially in Toronto, agrees Sloan. “Although it’s considered more of a day of remembrance we also will kind of use it as a bit of an excuse that ‘eh, it’s Saint Patrick’s Day. Wear some green, have some beers.’”
This weekend, a beer or two may very easily turn into a night spent on the toilet. It seems that students’ infatuation with partying and alcohol on March 17 stems from the commercialization of the holiday. Basically, it’s a good way to sell beer, says Fraser.
“Advertisements appear in North American newspapers for all sorts of green paraphernalia. I noticed this in late 19th century Toronto newspapers at a time when there were no longer any public parades in the city,” says Jenkins, citing his Irish studies.
“If you’re going to use it as a day to wreak havoc or go a little too overboard, it’s kind of annoying. Especially when people throw on the fake Irish accents.”
Businesses have certainly taken this opportunity to make a profit, Salazar says. “Now all of a sudden, you got nightclubs celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day on a Tuesday night, and they charge $50 for a ticket,” he says.
The truth of the matter is, as students, we like to be a part of something big. “So, if you know there’s a day in the year where people are going out en mass to celebrate, you’re going to want to be a part of it,” Salazar adds.
“If I want to just go out and party, I’m finding a reason but the question is: how valid is that reason? Is it really valid, or fair, to the holiday? To whatever Saint Patrick represents? And if you look back at what people do, it isn’t,” says Salazar.
“If you’re going to use it as a day to wreak havoc or go a little too overboard, it’s kind of annoying,” says Sloan. “Especially when people throw on the fake Irish accents.”
The cultural aspects of Saint Patrick’s Day, including Mass, may still be a feature of the day. “But it seems to have gotten drowned out by the emphasis on partying. This downplaying of religion, and the wider commercialization of the day, invite parallels with Christmas and other dates in the cultural calendar,” says Jenkins.
So what does this all mean? Have we opened the gates to a slippery slope for other holidays?
Holidays celebrated in the same manner as Saint Paddy’s Day all have a feel-good factor to them. It works well in a time and place where diversity is valued as a public good, Jenkins says. But like it or not, fun, unique, and, literally colourful ways to drink now play an integral role in the way students celebrate March 17.
It seems that this is the case mainly because of how it’s being presented to us. “It’s so commercialized,” says Salazar, “that it’s being ingrained in our minds.”
Perhaps, holidays do not mean what they were intrinsically supposed to anymore after all, but that certainly does not mean Saint Patrick’s Day must pave the way for adopting these same drinking habits on other cultural holidays.
“It’s all sort of a hodgepodge,” adds Cas. “I think it’s what makes them holidays—that people can celebrate them how they want. It’s unfortunate that maybe we forget some of the more interesting facets of Saint Paddy’s Day. But I think that maybe we need to bring those fun—not necessarily drinking—traditions back to the forefront.”
