Kegs and eggs is not Irish

I'm an American of Irish decent. I don't say that much, growing up I was Irish. It wasn't until I landed at Shannon Airport that someone said you're American and it hurt deeply. Not that I am not proud to be an American but all at once I lost my heritage. Here in the US we hold tightly to our past, it is what makes this country great, America is a mixture of every culture in the world. We embrace each others heritage, or at least we should. America gives us the freedom to say, I'm Italian, I'm Greek, I'm French and for me, I'm Irish.
Thursday is St. Patrick's Day, a day that the Irish in this country and around the world stand and show the pride for their patron saint and the land that they came from. To say that the Irish came to this country seeking a better life is to simplistic. During the 700 years of British rule in Ireland, yes, this country offered a better life. During the 1840's and the Great Hunger ( you may know this as the potato famine) the choice that people made was leave for America or Canada or stay and die. The Great Hunger was a genocide of the Irish people by the British government, while the potato crop was ruined by blight the country was producing food fro the rest of the British Empire. Shiploads of corn, barley, rye and other produce left Irish harbors every day but the landlords would not let the Irish people have any.The Irish have sung of this for years, in the song Fields of Athenry the line is
For you stole Trevelyn's corn
So the young might see the morn.
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.
Christy Moore is his song City of Chicago, sings
Eighteen forty seven
was the year it all began,
Deadly pangs of hunger
drove a million from the land,
They journeyed not for glory,
Their motive wasn't greed,
Just a voyage of survival,
Across the stormy sea.
I give you this lesson to explain a little why we are proud to be Irish.
Do we drink, yes. Do we carry on, yes. Do we do what you see in the video above, no.
Growing up we always said on St. Patrick's Day there are two kinds of people, Irish and those that want to be Irish. The drunken college students in the video are the wanna be's.
So who's fault is this disgrace? I as a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a fraternal order of Irishmen, will take some of the blame. We have perpetuated the stereo type of drunken Irish to a point, but that point is far from riot and destruction of the Kegs and eggs party. We, as Irish flock to Festivals that are sponsored by beer companies and we laugh at ourselves in TV ads for Guinness. We also have festivals, like the one Sunday in Saratoga, that are for families to celebrate St. Patrick, and while the Albany police were cleaning up the riot members of the Irish community were at mass. I lay a lot of the blame on stores like Spencer's Gifts that fill their shelves with St. Patty's Day merchandise like green beer bongs and shirts that say "Irish Drinking Team". Herein lies the problem, my children have been raised to have fun for St. Patrick's Day and on parade day, this fun includes drinking and dancing and singing the songs. If you are not Irish and don't have the background to know that it's St. Patrick's Day not St. Patty's Day and think the more you drink the more Irish you are, we end up with the riot.
When the Saratoga Hibernians left New Orleans a couple of years ago after a national convention of the AOH, one of the bellmen at the hotel said,"I've seen Mardi Gras, Super Bowls and conventions in my time but I have never seen a group of people drink as much as you people with out a single problem or complaint"
One last Irish lesson, St. Patrick drove the snakes and vermin out of Ireland. It seems to me that they ended up on Hudson Ave. on Saturday morning.
Enjoy yourselves on Thursday and remember to drink responsibly and have a good time.