virus: Give me a day, any day, but this one.

Kristee (kjseelna@students.wisc.edu)
Tue, 17 Mar 1998 20:53:58 -0600

Hello, today is Saint Patrick's Day. This does matter much to me
at all, but while I was at work today, I couldn't help but realize how
relevant this holiday is to memetics. Well I assume that all holidays are
memetic in nature, correct? But what really amused and entertained me is
all of the 'memes' that go along with the holiday itself.
So here I am at work (at a food-service counter in a student
center) and a fellow co-worker and I were amazed at the popularity of the
shamrock-shaped, green-frosted sugar cookies, which normally wouldn't sell
well at all, but today customers were elated to buy them. I can assure
you, these particular cookies are not that appealing, other than how they
look. The customers are merely purchasing a food item because of it's
connotation with St. Patrick's Day.
Normally we offer two kinds of gourmet coffee; a particular regular
kind, and a flavored kind. Of course, ours today was 'Irish Creme'. Of
course this flavored coffee tastes NO different from how it usually does,
but today it was more popular. I asked a woman (dressed in green, head to
toe) what kind of coffee she would like. Her reply was that she wanted the
Irish Creme, of course, "Can't you see how I'm dressed?". This sounds
silly, but she wasn't eccentric, she's just like everyone else who thinks a
particular saint, a particular country, and a particular color could be
associated together to form a holiday.
This whole affair made me rethink the whole concept of a holiday.
I mean, St. Patrick and St. Valentine have nothing to do with our lives,
much less the colors red and green. Ever wonder how the heck red/green and
a pagan figure like Santa Claus could represent Christmas, a religious
holiday, or how orange/black equals Halloween, or Easter (the resurrection
of Christ) equals pastels, a rabbit and eggs?
These issues simultaneously double over in laughter, and question our
sanity. The fact is, consumers will buy into just about anything, and one
of the most oversold memes is the holiday one.
Is this day any different than another? Does it have anything to
do with a Saint?! Does it actually have anything to do with the color
green?!! You could say this is all commercial, but oh, there must be
something else; an idea that this holiday actually exists, and even without
merchandising the idea keeps perpetuating itself so that we need to
distinguish how "unique" this Tuesday is above all others.
So I guess there is a "St. Patrick's Day meme" out there, which
infects people and makes them act very silly; dressing up in green,
bedecking themselves with shamrocks, drink green beer and other beverages,
crave mint icecream, fancy seeing leprechauns, and have a penchant for
anything 'Irish'.
When you watch others from afar and really think about all this nonsense,
you realize how absurd it all is.
Save Me!!!

Kristee