Happy Saint Patrick’s Day Weekend

[As seen in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts.]

Poor Saint Patrick. Poor his Day. In Illinois college towns of my acquaintance, Saint Patrick's Day has become Unofficial Saint Patrick’s Day, or Unofficial (the word is now a noun). It’s a pre-seventeenth Saturday, a barowner’s creation to make the money lost when the seventeenth falls, as it often does, during spring break. For too many students, Unofficial is a day set aside for drinking, all-day drinking. The day is preceded by tweets apologizing to one's liver, and tweets resolving not to remember a thing. And it’s followed by tweets announcing that Unofficial was epic, and tweets asking why there has to be “school” on Monday. It saddens me that such an obvious ploy finds so many willing participants, and that those participants think there’s something brave and rebellious and subversive about getting drunk.

And now there's the oxymoronic Saint Patrick’s Day Weekend, to make the money lost when the seventeenth falls, as it does this year, on a Monday.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day Weekend.