Speaking as an American of Irish ancestry, let me assure you: Siento tu dolor. I, too, am not unfamiliar with the sensation you feel when you see our fellow-Americans taking a reasonably important, but not overwhelmingly relevant, event from your ancestors’ history – and turning it into a booze-drenched bacchanalia of cheap alcohol, and bad decisions. Some of you have probably tried to reason with them, explaining to anybody who would listen that the holiday is not even that big a deal in Mexico. Don’t tell me, let me guess what happened: they looked at you, grinned in that slack-jawed way that only the catastrophically drunk can manage, and ordered another shot of horrible tequila.
…Well, whaddya going to do? This is the way of it. At least they’re not drinking the good stuff…
You’re probably right – if we’re going to celebrate every French defeat we’d probably be drinking too much. I mean, the French even celebrate as their national holiday the day they managed to lose to themselves…
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I’m still going to drink a margarita tonight tho, but if you like, I can say that it’s to celebrate Revenge of the Fifth instead.
Here at The University, it’s the last day of classes. I suspect much drinking will be done, regardless of the excuse, in preparation for Finals on Monday.
Heh. Just wandered over to Fausta’s Blog and found this gem.
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Like for many things, we can apparently blame California.
And, I think Phineas nailed the inception.
And here I thought we could blame Porfirio Diaz.
Trivia: the word “gringo” comes from Irish mercenaries fighting for Mexico during the Mexican-American War.
Being Irish, they sang their traditional cheerful songs in camp at night. One of the more popular was Green Grows the Grass (On My Grave). So the Mexicans (who didn’t habla) took to calling them GreenGrows, with a horrible accent. A bit of drift over time, and you’ve got the current slur.
I thought they were referred to as the San Patricios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Battalion Musical history in song. https://youtu.be/jEO3aIv1e2Q
The only place in Mexico where they celebrate this ‘holiday’ is the town where the battle took place.
This is a conspiracy cooked up by Corona Beer company to have excuse to get people drunk.