St. Patrick is definitely up there on my list of favorite saints. He’s the patron saint of my distant homeland, he rid it of snakes, and he is the most notable Catholic advocate of excessive drinking. In fact he might be the only. And in even more fact, he might not condone alcohol at all. But either way, when I wake up every March 17^th, it is with eager anticipation for a very long day of alcoholic beverages.

For college students across our great nation (and hopefully Ireland), St. Patrick’s Day is the ultimate example of turning an otherwise mundane holiday into a massive excuse to drink a lot of beer. However, if I know St. Patrick (and I like to think I do, as I went to CCD every Sunday until I was confirmed) there are def some Do’s and Don’ts for his high holy day.

DO: Wake up bright and early to celebrate the most wonderful college holiday of life. Even if you need to go home and go back to sleep (or chug some green food-colored Red Bull), it is imperative that you wake up by 7 am and wait in line to get banded. If you have an incredibly doting boyfriend, someone who owes you a huge favor or access to fraternity pledges, even better; they can wait in line for you while you get in some practice time for green beer keg stands. Why begin your long day of drinking so early? Because many other Irish (or pretend Irish) revelers have the same brilliant idea, and the line at your fave campus bar will only get more and more massive  as the day goes on. Additionally, the brilliant owners of said bar have probably caught onto this trend and will be charging increased admission by the hour as the late risers, class-attenders , and the generally slow people who didn’t yet realize it was March 17^th trickle in for some Irish Car Bombs. Even if you have to start celebrating St. Patty’s at midnight the night before and stumble into a cab at 6, wake.up.early. Read More »

When I tell people that I was raised with no religion, it’s usually met with a certain amount of skepticism. I never realized what an anomaly it was until I moved away for college, and childhood stories, stories from home, were a matter of course in the ‘getting to know you’ conversations, and bitching about abandoned family religion was a hot topic.

“Never? You’ve really never been to church? What about Christmas? Easter? Seriously?”

Nope, never means never. At the age of 18, I had never sat in a pew and attended a church service. We weren’t high Holy Day Jews, or Easter-only Catholics, or even Unitarians in it for the social aspect (as my Dad was raised, until he was given the option to stop going around age 12). American demographics being what they are, my exposure to religion was haphazard, but fairly broad. I had friends of many religions, though I was too young to really understand what that meant, beyond a weekly time commitment. More importantly, I knew no one for whom it was a problem that I didn’t believe, just as I didn’t care if they did.

Even with this lack of Christianity, Christmas was (and is) a big deal in my home. A tree with an angel and packages and cookies and friends and family, the whole nine yards, the family tradition. Looking back, it’s odd that we had tiny creche figures that we got to remove one at a time from our daily advent calendar, complete with baby Jesus, but it was part of the package. We believed in the story, but that was as far as it went. I knew that Jesus was a good guy, a leader of men, but…he can’t be the son of God if you don’t believe in God. Read More »