3/17/06 Erin go what?

Happy St. Patricks Day all you wonderful people out there in blog land!

I read an article yesterday that said that true Irish Catholics (the Ireland variety) don't have a big celebration for St. Pat's day. There's no green, and they don't drink lots of beer. It's a somber day, they may eat a big meal with the fam, then retire to the living room to sleep it off, and that's it. But then, the Irish tourism board caught wind of what Americans THOUGHT that the Irish were doing, so, being an opportunistic tourism board, they immediately started having parades and green beer. The Ireland Irish think that it's an American tradition that for some reason, Americans go flocking over to Ireland to celebrate, but they're getting lots of tourism dollars out of it, so why rock the boat? Kiss your lucky blarney stone and start taking the American tourist's money.