Thursday, March 16, 2017

St. Patrick

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day.  The school across the street from where I live in Boulder is called a Catholic school.  But it is not.  Why?  No day off for St. Patrick.  Capitalism has won out.  We are into productivity and work.  It was not always so.  If you lived in the 18th century, the Catholic countries has 80 to 120 days off for feast days, usually associated with saints.  Now the farmers had to work anyway, but still, it was a bit of work-lite.  In Protestant countries, they only got 15-25 days off for holidays.  In part they did not truck much in all this Catholic Saint and Mary feast days,  But it was also the work ethic of capitalism.  Days off cut into productivity and profits.  Karl Marx thought it nothing but greed and avarice.  Whatever.  But Catholics were good at parties then, and not much into capitalism.  When I was a boy we had St. Patrick's Day off.  But Catholics have become good capitalists and much more productive and workaholic.  I try to uplift the old days when Catholics were into parties.  I will work little and play much tomorrow.  I will be a witness to the children hard at work at their desks across the street.  Oh, I forgot.  I am in Vero Beach, Florida.  Anyone for golf?  Or I can go and witness to the children at St. Helen's school down the street in Vero, chained to their desks as Patrick and the Irish weep.

No comments:

Post a Comment