[Originally posted on March 17th 2010]
Happy St. Patrick’s Day/St. Patty’s Day/Evacuation Day/Irish Christmas to all my dedicated drunkards!
A quick post for you all, just to say enjoy the fabulous weather and the even more fabulous reason to drink, dirnk, driiink, drrnink, drinisrnicke. Good, way to catch up.
Now if you’re like me, are at all Irish, have lived for your entire life in Mass, and also have quite a soft spot in your heart for Boston (and yes it may be heart disease from all the boozing, but we’ll call it love), than today is a pretty special day for you. So, cheers my potato-eating brethren! If you aren’t, well, it’s okay, because this is the one day of the year that everyone is Irish simply by association! So drinks all around!
But we’ll also take a moment to acknowledge the fact that today is actually a sanctioned holiday and a day off from school for all of Suffolk county (that’s Boston, folks). It’s Evacuation Day! Hoorah! Now, bear with me, I did a little investigative research (Wikipedia) and came up with this little tidbit:
“The 11-month siege of Boston ended when the Continental Army, under the command of George Washington, fortified Dorchester Heights in early March 1776 with cannons captured at Ticonderoga. British General William Howe, whose garrison and navy were threatened by these positions, was forced to decide between attack and retreat. To prevent what could have been a repeat of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Howe decided to retreat, withdrawing from Boston to Nova Scotia on March 17. The British evacuation was Washington’s first victory of the war. It was also a huge morale boost for the Thirteen Colonies, as the city where the rebellion began was the first to be liberated.”
And also…
“While Saint Patrick’s Day parades have been held in Boston since 1876, Evacuation Day was not declared a holiday in the city until 1901…”
And finally…
“A 1941 law establishing the holiday in Suffolk County was signed in both black and green ink.”
We would.
So there you have it my avid followers, I’m quite sure that you are now just super full of knowledge and are ready to go wash it all down with a tall glass of Guinness. Well get to it, I won’t keep you. Just remember, Irish or not, make a little room in your big gay hearts for dear St. Patty and Evacuation Day today, because I think the moral of our little Wiki-lesson is: beer = freedom.
Yours truly in getting the point across,
The (green) boy at sea
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