Once upon a time, I lived in a town which had a large number of residents who claimed Irish heritage. But a vocal minority was of Bohemian ancestry, with the result that at this time of year, the greeting card racks were evenly divided between green cards for those who wanted to send a note to someone for St. Patrick’s Day, and red cards, for those who wanted to do the same thing on St. Joseph’s Day (March 19.) The Bohemians DID have to share St. Joseph with the Italians, but we did not have enough descendants of Italian foreparents to make a difference in sales.
I don’t see that where I live now (though there are far more Italians around here) but I suspect it has less to do with heritage these days than with those sales. Greeting card companies do not like to try to do too many holidays at once: it dilutes customer interest. (I learned this when I tried to do a line of St. Andrew’s Day cards, for the Scottish, and was told straight out by one card company “We do not need another card holiday between Thanksgiving and Christmas”.) However, those of you who celebrated St. Patrick’s Day a bit too much can take a few St. Joseph aspirin and thus continue to honor the saints. (Nod to the regular reader who tossed me this joke.)
I was eating out on March 16 (or St. Patrick’s Day II, as it is known where I live now. Friday night, you see, was St. Patrick’s Day I, and…you should see what happens when St. Patrick’s falls on a Wednesday, and TWO weekends need to be turned over to the saint. Is green beer really that addictive? In Milwaukee, green bagels were at one time the big thing to HAVE with green beer, and over here we have green egg rolls filled with corned beef and cabbage—only in America–but I have yet to see green eggs and ham offered…where were we?)
Eating out on March 16, I asked, in the name of nothing much, “How come people bar HOP but pub CRAWL?”
I got one of those looks which changed the subject at once. I thought, “Okay, Blogsy, take this question into the Greater Interweb Community, where they appreciate you.” As sometimes happens, though, my dining companions were right.
Apparently, NOBODY bar hops any more. People in this time and place pub crawl. If not, they bar crawl, a term I had not heard until I looked up the question. The term “pub crawl” originated across the pond, as you might expect from the word “pub”. Bar crawling came about in the United States, where people who run pubs are considered unnecessarily picturesque.
I was also unaware that bar crawling is one of the sociopolitical questions that divides American voters today. A number of communities organize special bar crawls, as do several colleges. On these days (frequently March 17), people join a tour group which moves from bar to bar, drinking in the history and heritage of each. That drinking is what put the “crawl” in “pub crawl”, as one’s ability to walk upright slips away after the seventh or eighth establishment.
But this has led other communities to forbid bar crawling. How they regulate this is not made clear to me (does the host check your hand for bar stamps from previous places?) but these communities insist that if you are going to drink too much, you should do it in just one bar and not become a menace to navigation crawling hither and yon. Of course, what worries these communities is that some people have no respect for tradition, and instead of crawling will try to DRIVE from bar to bar. (It’s not a “bar drive”, people. Get with the program.)
This is why some such communities have also banned “happy hour”, which, since it suggests drinking just before Rush Hour, becomes a bad idea as well. I would discuss the history of rush hours and happy hours in this space as well, but I’ve run out of space. I must now go and make a corned beef sandwich for lunch, something which I believe most states and saints would approve, and, having washed it down with something carbonated but not fermented, will crawl to MY version of happy hour, which I call “Nap Time”.
Blogsy Babbles 