I hate drinking holidays and believe they are the bane of existence for humanity. I understand that in our regimented society humans need to enter into a Dionysian form of celebration. That is why we have Carnival, Mardi Gras, Saint Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, July 4th, and various other days were society collective participates in the narcotic drink of the Gods. This breaks down into a simple equation (that I created for illustration purposes): (Order*TA)+(Chaos*TD)X=K or if you want to go Greek on it: (Apollonian*TA)+(Dionysian*TD)X=K with TA being equal to time in an Apollonian state, TD being equal to time in a Dionysian state, X being a multiplier of intensity, and K being a constant and equilibrium. Our K may be different from person to person, but we as people will constantly try to reach this equilibrium. But how is this an issue?
Well, considering I saw a car crashed into a light pole at noon today, I would argue that repressing society leads to horrible mistakes on any holiday were it is acceptable to get smashed. For many people, they spend five days out of the week following a strict schedule. Come the weekend, they try to equalize those five days of order with one of chaos. However, they may never equalize perfectly. Thus, there is often a discrepancy, and in order to fix this discrepancy, they make up for all the order in their life by getting blitzed out of their mind by noon on one of these special drinking holidays. Then, they stumble by the coffee shop, the thrift store, and eventually vomit on some poor squirrel which will probably die due to alcohol poisoning. They do this because they need to equalize. It isn’t healthy to have a binge day, and this has been known for a long time; the ancient Greeks solved this equation by stressing moderation. But on these days, all I can do is hide inside because I fear for my life as cars go barreling into poles, people fight in the streets, and the gutters run red with shots of Fireball.
So, make sure you balance your life, participate in the festivities carefully, and always have a plan so you don’t end up operating heavy machinery. The squirrels thank you in advance.