Forget St. Patrick, Get Drunk for Brigid

Hi. I’m St. Brigid of Kildare. Oh, you’ve never heard of me? What a surprise! I understand that there’s recently been an International Women’s Day in celebration of what was once called the fairer sex. How nice to see that the ladies are getting a portion of their due – and how enraging to see that as far as Saints’ Days go, not one single blessed thing has changed. 

 

Everybody just looooves that snake-hating weirdo Patrick, don’t they? Do I dare even point out that Ireland never had any snakes to begin with, because they couldn’t swim across the Irish Sea? Leave it to a man to take credit for a woman’s work – and in this case, that woman is Mother Nature herself. 

 

If Patrick had a genius for anything, it was branding. He managed to take the color of the entire country and make it all about him. You’d think the shamrock grew just so he could make his cutesy Holy Trinity analogy to people he didn’t think could understand the concept of a tripartite God unless he explained it to them with a perennial weed. Way to condescend to your flock, Patrick, though looking at the wealth of swag and merch that winds up in the gutter every year, even I have to admit it seems to have worked.

 

I get it. You like to drink. Patrick is your fun guy, the divorced* dad who lets you do anything you please at weekends. And you think because I am a consecrated virgin, I’m no fun? I turned water into beer, you half-wits! You want to dye your beer and your rivers green for that preening jackass, go right ahead, but turning beer into green beer looks pretty weak compared with turning regular H2O into fun juice, you ask me.

 

Did you know that in Haitian Vodou, I’m worshipped as a death loa? I’m the consort to Baron Samedi! One of my relics is my skull! How much more metal can you even get? If you want to get hammered on a Saint Day, why not get yourself a skull-shaped shot glass and go to town, and piss off with this fey green beer bullshit? Speaking of which: Patrick’s real name is Maewyn. What a weenie. 

 

So if you’re really interested in honoring women, I submit that you start with getting wasted in *my* name instead. As my Saint Day falls on February 1st, this would be a terrific way to end your little Dry January experiment. As an added bonus, you’ll be able to imbibe without having to cede your bar stool to every Brian, Ryan, and  Sully from every racist Boston suburb who shows up in a green paper top hat and threatens to show you their pot o’ gold. And that, my friends, would be a true miracle.

 

Yours in Perpetual Fire,

Brigid

 

PS: do not even get me started on St. Columba. That guy is the worst.

 

*not that either one of us would condone divorce, what are we, Anglicans?