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Introduction
Saint Patrick was a Roman. I bet you didn't know that. I think it would be a pretty safe bet, since most of you are total
idiots and probably think St. Patrick was a cartoon or a leprechaun. But he was a real guy, and he lived in Briton when it
was under Roman rule.
Part I: The Romans
When I was a kid there was a cartoon called The Roman Holidays and it was kind of like The Flintstones
except it was set during Roman times, like in the first century. It was just as true to history as, say, The Flintstones
was to anthropology, and was just bland enough not to be as offensive as a cartoon about a Roman family with a pet lion in
ad 63 should have been. At least, as far as I know, they didn't feed the lion "Christian In A Can" when they put it
out at night.
I always thought it would be funny and kind of offensive if they had a "special Christmas episode" where they took a
vacation to Israel and actually met Mary and Joseph at the first Christmas, and like Gus Holiday arm-wrestled Joseph
for the last room at the Inn.
Or, better yet, say they go to Jerusalem and they're having a picnic or something, and then there's this big commotion
and a crowd and everything, so the dad is like "What's all the fuss about?" and the mom goes "It wasn't like this last
time we were here!" and they tell the story about how they first came to Israel and the whole episode is a flashback to the
first Christmas, and then cut to present-day and they could be like, "I wonder whatever happened to that baby?" and then the
crowd they saw making a riot scene, is calling for Jesus to be crucified.
Or it could be more offensive even than that, and they could have a Hanna Barbera cartoon where Jesus and the Apostles
go around solving crimes.
Or worse than that even, they could have an episode of Scooby Doo where Fred and Velma explain away all of Jesus'
miracles as parlor tricks, and He was just doing it to scare away all the Pharisees so that He could build His own Temple,
with a water-slide.
Anyway, Saint Patrick was a Roman, and I know this was way off topic and I wasn't even talking about real Romans but
cartoon ones and how offensive and sick I imagine them being.
Part II: Saint Patrick
So you didn't know that Saint Patrick was a Roman, and I bet you also didn't know that he was a slave. He was carried
off to Ireland to be a slave, and then he escaped, and then he went back as a missionary to convert the heathen Irish
to Christianity.
He did a really good job of it, too. Ask anyone in Belfast today. This is a country where the national pasttime is getting
drunk in crowded bars and then throwing darts across the room, and a people reknowned for their hair-trigger tempers, and
we set aside a day to honor the man who brought them religion, a subject they've been blowing up busfuls of schoolchildren
about for the last thousand years.
It's like setting aside a day to honor the first man to sell liquor to Native Americans, or the guy who introduced gunpowder
to Muslims.
Of course, you can argue that when a busful of schoolchildren is blown up, at least they've been baptized. After
all, they're not blowing up pagan children, like they would have if Patrick hadn't converted everyone. Without Saint
Patrick, they would have mostly stayed pagan, and just been sacrificing babies to sun-gods. I wonder how that movie The
Quiet Man would have turned out.
I don't think Patrick was a bad guy, and I don't think the Irish are bad people. I'm half Irish myself. I'm just wondering
if, in the end, he did them any favors by giving them religion.
Part III: Religion
I don't think religion is a bad thing, but most times I don't think religion has anything to do with God. I believe
in God; most times, though, I don't believe in people.
Like, Pat Robertson is a big-time religious guy, and he says that Muslims are under demonic influence. That's all over
the paper, but I don't know why it's news to people. I’m sure if you pressed him, Mr. Robertson would tell you that
demonic activity accounts for everyone who ever graduated Clown College,
and is the reason that parrots can talk. He’d probably also add that fossils were all buried by agnostic Jews in the
1920’s, and Hillary Clinton was raised by jackals. Saying that Muslims are demons almost seems boring after that.
Muslims, on the other hand, riot over cartoons. The fact that people who claim any kind of faith at all are capable of
rioting just boggles the mind, but that they do it over cartoons is like we're living in Bizarro world. We should walk around
with t-shirts and bracelets that say "What Would Jesus Not Do?"
I know this doesn't have anything to do with St. Patrick's Day, but whatever. I got it off my chest.
Conclusion: Irish People Rock!
It's been said that a friend will come bail you out of jail, but a true friend will be sitting right beside you in the
drunk tank the next morning going "That was awesome!"
So I think it's great that Irish people from all over the world can put aside their differences for a day, get wasted
and dump green dye in the river. It's better than singing God Save The Irish Republic and tossing Molotov cocktails at each
other. And I think it's what St. Patrick would have wanted.
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