Stuff and Magic

Our National Day, St. Patrick's Day, March 17th used to be an important day of both religious and national celebration. That's when I was a boy. Now it has degenerated into yet another celebration of sheer capitalist consumerism and beer. Indeed the annual celebration of national drunkenness has become so severe that this year there is a big "go easy on the booze" campaign which even the Guinness people have signed up to. Oh! and did I say that the National Day is no longer a day. It seems to go on for a week now. In Dublin today, 2 days before the 17th, the whole thing was already in full swing. Green stuff of the most awful kind was being sold all over town and hundreds of young people, mostly not natives I might add, were parading about bedecked in the gear.  Some sort of magic seems to be in the air.