Cheers to Guinness and Green Beer!

       St. Patty’s Day. On this day, you get tons of people throughout the country wearing ridiculously looking outfits of pea green and wearing buttons saying “Kiss me, I’m Irish”.  But in Chico, we do things a little differently.  Just like every other holiday, the Chico State students take the full advantage of not having school and celebrate by day drinking and partying till their hearts’ content – or until they are passed out in some gutter due to the numerous amounts of  beer pong, flip cup, the occasional keg stand and of course the ever-so-famous beer bong.  Bars lure the students in with great drink deals and cheap alcohol that fills their bellies at the wee hours of 6 am in the morning (depending on the holiday).  Holidays such as Labor Day, Halloween, Cesar Chavez, Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, and St. Patty’s are seen as “one day” holidays to the regular everyday American, but in the small student community of Chico we are able to take this “one day celebrated” holidays and expand them out to a full blow weekend, three day, or even five day celebrations.  Hands down, we just want to party – end of story. 

So an outsider might ask: What would a Chico student do on St. Patty’s Day?  Well, if you really want to know…

The students wake up early in the morning to start celebrating this glorious holiday that promotes alcohol to its finest.  As they wake up, they find themselves being attacked and hackled by their roommates as they struggle to put on an ugly green shirt and pop some Advil for their on-coming hangover.  Their breakfast consists of a couple of Irish Car Bombs, a multiple glasses of thick Guinness and of course, green beer.  Throughout the day there will be kegs full of cheap green beer and parties on every street as well as girls in green bikinis and drunken men running around with beads.  If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to make it till 2 in the afternoon, take a nap for about 5 hours and be up again to finish off what you started so early in the morning.  Now of course, not everyone in Chico is an alcoholic (I don’t want to give you that impression), but there are many of us that enjoy celebrating this great holiday by marinating ourselves in green beer.  We do enjoy waking up early in the morning to just get shit-faced. By doing this, we usually find ourselves praying to the porcelain god the next morning or begging God to make the pain in our stomach, head, or body to go away; swearing never to drink again. 

But what about the rest of the world? Do they partake in the same festivities? How would St. Patrick feel about this? Seriously, I don’t think that he’s looking down on us and encouraging the Chico student to chug his beer before he takes another shot that consists of a thick black liquor.  No, I really do believe that he’s looking down on all of us and giving us the finger; not the middle one of course, but the one that your grandmother would give you if you did something wrong.  Hell, he probably is giving us the middle finger.  You probably think that he would just enjoy us celebrating his life and dedicating a day just for him.  But who was St. Patrick? What did he do that was so great that gave him his own day?  Did he invent beer or create the distiller? Because if he did, then we’re celebrating him for the right purposes, but I really don’t think that’s why.

            St. Patrick was born in Britain from Roman parents (therefore he wasn’t Irish).  He was soon captured and taken prisoner when his family’s estate was being raided.  They then took him to Ireland where he tended to sheep and kept to himself.  It was during this time period where he found and turned to God.  It is said that he had dreams of God talking to him and telling him to turn people to the Christian faith.  After about six years, he escaped his imprisonment and left Ireland.  Yet once he went back to Britain and re-united with his loved-ones, he received another dream saying for his to return to Ireland as a missionary.  After he spent many years in training, he was finally ordained a priest and went to Ireland to start his missionary.  He was going to minister to Christians that were already there and spread the word of God. It is said that he chased out all the snakes in Ireland. To clarify, this is just a metaphor for the eradication of pagan and the success of Christianity.  200 years after St. Patrick, it was said that all of Ireland was Christianized.  He preached for about 40 years until he died on March 17, 493.

            Looking at the history, we can see that St. Patrick was not a man who had anything to do with alcoholic beverages, the color green or even leprechauns.  No, St. Patrick was a man of God and a priest, so technically we should all be going to church on this day instead of wasting our time wearing useless green clothing and watching Darby O’Gill and the Little People.  And for all those years your mother fed you corn beef and cabbage for this holiday and for all those pinches that you got when you were in elementary school was totally unnecessary.  Not just that, but he wasn’t even Irish.  So instead of wearing green and wearing shirts that say “kiss me I’m Irish”, we should be wearing green, read and white, eating pasta, drinking wine and playing Frankie and Deano all day.  There wouldn’t be Darby O’Gill and the Little People, no, our televisions would be filled with the Godfather trilogy, Soprano reruns, and other famous movies that are indulged with Italian actors.

            Sadly, America (and the rest of the world for that matter) have this whole day of St. Patrick completely mixed up.  I do believe that St. Patrick is giving us the bird and is expecting more out of us instead of our beige drinking.  Yet still, the students of Chico and many other colleges will partake this day that is filled of cheap liquor and all-day drinking.  To the rest of the world we might look like alcoholics, but toady I raise up my glass to go get a cup of green beer. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!