St. Patrick can be celebrated without alcohol. And probably should.
I feel it is racist and presumptuous for a bunch of ugly Americans to sully Patrick's good name by doing nothing but wear gaudy trash and get rip-roaring drunk. It's disrespectful to actual Irish people. It is a level of parody and mockery that would be met with violence if it were used against a protected class such as Blacks or LGBT.
I am, in fact, a teetotaler, and I belong to an Irish association that promotes temperance and we practice total abstinence from intoxicating drinks. I took inspiration from my pastor, who was a member and spoke of his experience. It is not a great sacrifice for me to give up alcohol, but it was a pleasure to drink sometimes, and so I offer it up for those who can't stop. Every time I see a drinker on the street, or an abandoned Steel Reserve at a bus stop, I stop and recite our pledge-prayer for them.
I feel that drunkenness and intoxication ruins lives and steals innocence. I believe that marijuana can be useful and has a place in society, but I also believe that it can be abused, and I don't much enjoy being exposed to a constant flow of secondhand smoke of any kind (my downstairs neighbor seemed to have a regular pot habit, and so my bedroom would fill daily with smoke, and I'm sure I had a contact high. This interacts poorly with my meds.)
Drunk drivers ruin holidays for many people. I try to stay off the roads, as a pedestrian, during peak-drunk seasons. A girlfriend once insisted it was perfectly safe to drive while stoned. I'm not so sure.
Maybe it's wrong to celebrate the guy at all since he supposedly went around driving out Irish pagans and destroying their culture and religion, but personally I suspect most people aren't thinking much about the man or what he did or didn't do, and are mostly just looking to enjoy themselves while spending a moment thinking about and celebrating Ireland and Irish people which is actually pretty nice. A decent number of us ugly Americans came from Ireland after all and we've come a long way from "No Irish Need Apply" to "Let's all have fun and celebrate Irish people!"
People shouldn't need to have much excuse to celebrate and have a good time however they decide to do it. St. Patrick's day is a good enough excuse for me. American's aren't generally very aware about other countries and their culture so when a lot of people think of Ireland what comes to mind is often Anything Green, Shamrocks, and Leprechauns which I get is a bit clumsy and reductive, but there's no hate behind it, so I don't see any need to choose to be offended by it. We've got plenty of other things that come from a place of hatred and fear to get offended over.
> I feel that drunkenness and intoxication ruins lives and steals innocence. I believe that marijuana can be useful and has a place in society, but I also believe that it can be abused
I think that everything has a place and can be abused. It seems the risks with alcohol are much higher, and a lot of people have had a bad time with it, but many more enjoy it and even enjoy occasionally over-enjoying it. Intoxicated people should stay off the roads though. Most of us have enough transportation options that it shouldn't be hard to take a train/bus, call a friend, or summon an uber. Driving while intoxicated is just selfish and dangerous
I've yet to see any evidence that this happens in the USofA .. I've only been exposed to decades of US reporting on gross caricatures of imagined "Irishness", grossly offensive attempts at mock Irish accents, and little actual knowledge of Irish history, the Gaeilge language, literature, etc.
Mind you I'm an Australian offshoot of Fenians imprisoned in Fremantle (a thread amoung a rich tapestry of other characters) so I have no deep insight into the second and third hand Irish of the US other than the obvious observation that it's not a good look from afar.
If you get the chance you should try going to a St. Patrick's Day parade in any major city sometime. You'll see it everywhere.
> I've only been exposed to decades of US reporting on gross caricatures of imagined "Irishness", grossly offensive attempts at mock Irish accents, and little actual knowledge of Irish history, the Gaeilge language, literature, etc.
gross caricatures of imagined "Irishness" and grossly offensive attempts at mock Irish accents are a big part of how America celebrates Ireland for sure! Many Americans couldn't even point out Ireland on an unlabeled map, they aren't going to learn Irish Gaelic anytime soon, but that doesn't stop them from doing their best with what they have. We don't get a lot of exposure to Irish culture normally, but photos of the parades held in Ireland don't look much different from the parades in NY or Chicago (although I do note fewer flags and more leprechauns).
America isn't much better with most other cultures assuming they get any attention at all. I'm sure folks could choose to get offended at our clumsy attempts at celebrating Chinese New Year, the Day of the Dead, or Oktoberfest too, but I really like that we try to incorporate holidays from around the world and give other cultures at least some consideration. I think it's great to see Ireland getting some love at least once a year in the states and while you won't see it being widely reported in the press, I wouldn't be surprised if the annual reminder that Ireland exists doesn't inspire some to take a deeper look at Ireland's people and culture once they've sobered up.
We've got several neighbours about who were born, educated, and worked in either the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland before coming out here to Australia (a number former security | police as we (W.Australia) offered assisted passage to migrate for work) and for them it's an odd thing seeing others several generations removed celebrating an imagined Brigadoon (albeit Irish rather than Scottish).
Still, as you note, photos of crowds here look much like photos of crowds there so it's hard to see any issue .. still I imagine that celebrating Ireland in Ireland by Irish people must differ in some manner from not that.
Americans are mostly ignorant of Pope Night, but some have heard of Guy Fawkes. Pope Night was Guy Fawkes Night imported to early America. Anti-Catholics would raise funds, take to the streets, and wreak havoc against anything in their way. George Washington himself finally abolished Pope Night, because he noticed that it annoyed the Canadians quite a bit, and Canada was a valuable ally (not to mention American Catholics as well) so he told all the Brit-Protties to knock it the hell off. So Guy Fawkes stayed in the UK and continues to burn every year, on schedule.
Anti-Catholicism is frequently referred to as "The Last Acceptable Prejudice", but there are plenty of acceptable prejudices for the politically correct, and a nation full of poor, oppressed white Catholics with funny accents is ripe for the picking.
Mexicans get it too, on Cinco de Mayo. Perhaps there is more sensitivity because they're side-by-side with us.
It'd be more like white families celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. by reciting the "I have a dream" speech and marching because that's all they know and associate him with, while others object that he's become an offensive caricature because actually he had a complex life and was more than just a civil rights leader and people celebrating ignore that he had many speeches and also spoke out a lot about class issues, not just race issues.
There are plenty of offensive stereotypes about Irish people, but we don't bring them out for the holiday. They're largely forgotten in the US.