God To Consolidate Drink-Fests Of St. Patrick’s Day, Purim

Eden, March 14 – The Lord Almighty has released plans announcing His intention to reduce the number of different holidays associated with intensive drinking, a move that will result this year in the Jewish festival of Purim and the Irish-Catholic holiday of St. Patrick’s Day occurring on overlapping days.

St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, celebrates the life and work of the man responsible for giving Christianity a foothold on the Emerald Isle in the fifth century. Purim commemorates the hidden miracles through which the Jews, under ancient Persian rule, went from a persecuted minority under threat of annihilation to a triumphant people with close ties to the king. Both holidays are known for excessive imbibing.

The Purim narrative is contained mostly in the Biblical book of Esther, which specifically established the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day of “drinking and joy.” The fourteenth of Adar occurs this year on March 16, with many celebrations extending into the night. In cities that were walled in ancient times, the festival is observed on the fifteenth, which coincides with St. Patrick’s Day this year. In practice, the only city that specifically observes the fifteenth is Jerusalem.

The consolidation reflects a growing trend toward privatization and consolidation that also lies at the root of the outsourcing of stupidity production to conspiracy theorists, and of disease manufacture to Chinese livestock and, more recently, to pollution-generating corporations.

But the combination of St. Patrick’s Day and Purim also points to a more fundamental conceptual overlap, according to divine spokesman Rabbi Mordechai Lichtman. “The Talmud in Tractate Hullin pinpoints the origins of the sensibilities of Haman, the villain of Purim, at the very beginning of human existence,” he explained. “The Talmud there sees the primordial serpent in the Garden of Eden as the ideological prototype of Haman – and what is St. Patrick known for but ridding Ireland of snakes?”

On Purim, Jewish men customarily drink until reaching the point of being unable to distinguish between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai,” commonly understood to refer to drinking to unconsciousness. Irish drinkers tend not to reach that point as soon as Jewish drinkers, though many a Hasidic celebration rivals the intensity of a good Irish swill-fest.

Additionally, said Rabbi Lichtman, the green associated with Eire also evokes Queen Esther, who the Talmud says had a greenish complexion. “That last idea is pretty esoteric. You have to get pretty drunk to appreciate it.”

Rabbi Lichtman offered no comment on rumors that Halloween would also be folded into Purim by 2020.