With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, it’s no surprise some students have already begun their celebratory festivities. If you creep on Facebook, you’ll see the green shirts have been taken out and worn. Stores like Spencer’s have obnoxious, inappropriate T-shirts on sale for St. Patty’s Day and even bars have jumped on the pre-St. Patty’s Day celebrations bandwagon.
Since the official holiday is only one day long and falls during the week, why wouldn’t students use both the weekend before and after to celebrate? Here’s how you can start your St. Patty’s Day festivities today.
Go Green. Not in the natural way that is most commonly associated with this phrase, but definitely go green. Buy all of your green items: shirts, funny headbands with the bouncy ears, beads, nail polish, whatever you may. Include in this list green food coloring, because nothing should look delicious this week, everything should look green.
Once all of your equipment has been accounted for, move on to self-preparation.
This is when you put the items to use. Paint your nails, make sure you’ve gotten enough green shirts or whatever to last a few wears and beer spills, and decide what pre-holiday pub crawls you’ll be attending over the weekend (we’ll hit actual St. Patty’s Day next week).
Day drink with your friends at your house, maybe throw a beerbq. Or if it’s early enough in the morning, throw some breakfast into the mix. Either way, you’ve got to make the food festive. Who wants to go to a holiday celebration that isn’t festive? Definitely not me. So here’s where that green food coloring you bought comes into play. If you’re making pancakes, add the coloring into the batter. Eggs? Obviously add in food coloring before you cook them – thank you, Dr. Seuss. Cookies? Stick with sugar cookies, because they’re the lightest and will turn the brightest green. Hamburgers? You can sprinkle some green food coloring into the meat before you cook it, even though that would look pretty nasty. You could also stick to dying the buns green if that sounds more appealing to you.
As far as drinking goes, run to the liquor store and pick up a green keg. Of course, you should have ordered one like two weeks ago if this was your plan, but if you didn’t, maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll have left overs. If this is the case, I’d question the reputations of the parties going on at your college.
If you’re planning on day drinking at someone’s house, still cook all of the green goodies and either a) bring them over as a cute present to avoid the cup fee or b) keep them at home for when you get back with the drunken munchies. Whichever is more acceptable for your lifestyle.
There is no reason to discount the bars on a holiday like this, especially since most bars (pubs) are Irish and the Irish is whose lifestyles we’re mimicking for this fantastic holiday. Let’s make them proud all week and just go big. Some campus bars will actually acknowledge the weekend and host events like the “Pre-St. Patty’s Day Party” or the “St. Patty’s Day Warm-Up Celebration.” Each of these will have incredibly cheap drink specials and what do you know? Green beer. Some will give out prizes, or shirts, or just encourage more drinking than they typically do.
As Campus Socialites, you already know how to appropriately party with two ‘Rs’ as my favorite football player Jared Allen once said. This is the time of year when the weather’s getting nicer and there’s more reason to drink than normal. Fuck homework and midterms, it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere as they say. So hit up the happy hour. Studying while buzzed is always better and more efficient anyway.
