This is my saint patrick's day tirade. I don't know how it is in other parts of the world, but in the "great melting pot", Wall Street looks for any excuse possible to cash in on culture. If you're Irish - we've got a day to sell you beer with food coloring, cheesy merchandise, and shoddy T-Shirts you will not wear. If you're Mexican - same thing - the advertisers go crazy on May 5th. It's almost insulting how they associate days with excuses to get drunk with those two cultures - I'm surprised that we haven't developed a day to celebrate Native Americans under the same pretense, "Get S*$t-Faced with Geromino Day". And the worst part is all manner of degenerate bastards who wear "honorary irish, kiss me anyway" T-Shirts. I had the odd fortune of spending a Saint Patrick's Day in New York City, which in and of itself was a sociology term paper waiting to be written - and was exposed to more green than at a Calista Flockhart puke-fest (okay, that was probably going a little too far).
ANYWAY - the whole reason for Saint Patrick's day is that Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. Little does anyone know that they all swam to Australia (shudder shudder - afraid of snakes).