Americans love their holidays. If there is an excuse to drag out more beer than most humans can possible imbibe within a weekend, they will find it and they will take full advantage of it. One of the benefits of being such a melting pot of cultures is that we can learn about new and more obscure holidays and then use them as further excuses to become drunken and end up on videos about “Girls Gone Crazy: St. Ipswitch Day!”

The funny thing is that the holidays are often minor holidays in the various countries we co-opt them from. If you go to Ireland around the time of St. Patrick’s Day and were expecting the entire country to be having some kind of massive party like you would find happening around Mardi Gras, you are likely to be disappointed. The holiday originally was a church-sanctioned deal and was often very reverent with the Catholics going to church and things like that. Only when Americans took control of it, invented green beer, and began partying like it was 1999, did the holiday become what it is today.

The poor people of Ireland, from what I can tell, were sort of surprised by this. As more and more tourists showed up in their country demanding to see the green beer factories, they got tired of shrugging and pointed people toward the Blarney Stone. So, they began adopting the rest of the world’s methods of celebration for the holiday. So, these days, you are likely to find the parades and the green beer and the partying, but if you think it originated there you would be sorely mistaken.

The same can be said for Cinco de Mayo. This is a Mexican holiday that a lot of drunken Americans, routinely asked by journalists at various parties, slurringly state is “Mexican Independence Day.” This would be wrong, of course. The day actually just celebrates a major Mexican victory over the French that ultimately helped lead to Mexican independence. Again, while the battle itself was celebrated in Mexico, it took Americans to turn it into a drunken mess.

That’s America for you. If we can take your minor holiday and then find a way to sell more beer or bring more people into our bars or pubs, we will do it. Right now there is probably a bar owner combing through books about other cultures, looking for that next holiday that he can sell more booze, invent a new drink or convince people they need to eat a certain kind of food in order to celebrate it properly.

Well, I thought I would tell you about one holiday that falls firmly into the made-up category, but at least this one was made up by my people. You see, the name Alaspa is Finnish. That would mean that, a long time ago, some of my relatives migrated to this country from Finland. The Finns are a very quiet people. However, they have quietly brought a lot of things to the world. Did you know that Nokia is not Japanese, but a Finnish company? The Finns were one of the first to take to texting, as well.

Well, many Finns in America live in Minnesota. This is probably because the vast frozen wasteland reminds them so much of their own vast frozen wasteland of a country back home near Helsinki. They can build their saunas (invented by Finns) and then jump into frozen lakes and risk brain aneurysms just like they did back in the old country.

So, once upon a time (although this is also disputed) a crazy Minnesotan Finn named Sulo Havumaki of Bemidji looked around and noticed the towns and people even in Minnesota drinking green beer and celebrating the hell out of St. Patrick’s Day. Now, like most only sorta sane people in the world he realized that the legend of St. Patrick is likely BS. No one man with a stick beat up all of the snakes in Ireland and drove them into the sea. So, he got to thinking, if the Irish could have a made up legend then why not the Finns?

So, he invented St. Urho (oor-ho). The legend here was that the Finns were once overrun by grasshoppers who were destroying the country’s grape crop. St. Urho stepped forward and uttered the magic words “Heinasirkka, heinasirkka, mene taalta hiiteen! (which roughly means, “Grasshopper, grasshopper, go to hell!”) .” This caused the nasty insects to become so afraid that they hopped themselves right out of Finland and the grapes were rescued.

Of course the fact that the climate of Finland is such that neither grasshoppers nor grapes are prevalent didn’t factor into the legend that the crazy Finn invented. The legend appealed to the many Finns living in Minnesota. Before too long there were statues erected for St. Urho and then came the parades and the various celebrations. Is it silly? Yes, it is. Does it sound ridiculous? Of course it does. Is it a reason for people to dress in costumes, dance in the streets and drink a lot? You betcha.

The day is routinely the day before St. Patrick’s Day. The color you are supposed to wear for this day is purple. I am not sure there is purple beer in various Minnesota towns, but I am betting that if you can turn beer green, you can find a way to turn it purple.

So, if you were looking to keep that drunken buzz going from the St. Patrick’s Day weekend and then the actual day of St. Patrick going, you may want to switch countries for just a moment. Go visit Scandinavia for a day and pull out the purple clothing. Just remember that the day before St. Patty’s Day is St. Urho’s Day and you can celebrate with the crazy Finns and get yourself good and lit and keep that drunken swagger going into the middle of the week.

Hurry, get in on it now you various bar owners, because it is only a matter of time before it catches on nationwide and the videos start coming out.