Sunday, March 16 2008
Happy Saint Bacchus Day!
Bacchus, by Caravaggio, courtesy Uffizi gallery
Ah, the wearin' o' the green. Like so many of our festivals, it's a wonderfully mixed-up bunch of silliness and forgotten traditions rolled into a party. The thing I'm most amused by is the amazing coincidence that March 16th and 17th were originally the time of the Bacchanalia, where ancient Romans partied like it was 999 BCE. According to Wikipedia (and hey, if it's on the internets, it's true!)
The bacchanalia were wild and mystic festivals of the Roman and Greek god Bacchus. Introduced into Rome from lower Italy by way of Etruria (c. 200 BC), the bacchanalia were originally held in secret and only attended by women. The festivals occurred on three days of the year in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill, on March 16 and March 17.
Wild and mystic ain't the half of it--and that's the toned-down version of the original Dyonisian festival of the Maenads, sort of Girls Gone Wild in ancient Greece. Eurpides wrote a pretty interesting play about the whole thing, one that would get an R-rating anywhere in the world. The main thing was self-intoxication and uncontrollability. They really took their socialising seriously!
Now, the North American holiday of St. Patrick's day supposedly celebrates the day Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, and commemorates it with wearing green, holding parades, and drinking and other assorted shenanigans, donnybrooks and assorted rumpuses. Weirdly though, it's a very quiet event in Ireland--they celebrate it a bit like North Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, with family friends (and presumably a nap on the couch watching football).
Of course, the original colour of St. Patrick was blue, there never were any snakes in Ireland (it's a metaphor for driving out Pagan religion and Christianising the isle--the Celtic cross, a crucifix with a circle on the crossbar shows this by superimposing the symbol of the cross over the Pagan sun) and nobody not already out of control would ever drink green beer. But it's really our only purpose-designated drinking holiday, so whom am I to judge? I celebrated in my own way, with a fine pint of stout and a plate of oysters.
Malpeque, Fanny Bay oysters, stout by Granville Island, glass by Guinness
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