With St. Patrick’s Day mere hours away, I actually heard some nimrod in the office the other day refer to the weekend prior to it as St. Patrick’s Day weekend, as in, “I don’t want anything to ruin my St. Patrick’s Day weekend.”

Now, presupposing that the douche bag who would utter such tripe has a functioning brain, my reaction was to ask why, as in “Why would anyone give holiday status to such an inconsequential day as St. Patrick’s Day?”

For that matter, why do days like St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Flag Day, Veterans Day, Groundhog Day and Columbus Day even exist?

They serve no purpose. Only government workers, who deserve extra days off as much as millionaires deserve more money, benefit from some of these bogus days scratched into the calendar every year.

Is there anything wrong with their existence? Probably not. But at the same time, why should anyone actually care they exist?

Let’s take these meaningless days one at a time.

St. Patrick’s Day is, of course, associated with the Irish, although St. Patty himself was either Scotch or English, depending on what fairy tale you choose to believe. His claim to fame was being kidnapped by pirates as a young boy, dreaming of God coming to him in a dream and following God’s word and baptizing the people of Ireland, then mostly heathens, into the Christian faith. He used the shamrock to explain the concept of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost (why must these words be capitalized?).

St. Patrick died, conveniently enough, on March 17.

Nice enough tale, but hardly reason for a Polish dock worker living in Teaneck, N.J. to go out on the town, drink enough green beer to drown a dolphin and throw up on his shoes.

So why is the day even celebrated? Probably for the same reason people go out on New Year’s Eve – it gives ‘em a reason to drink enough imported beer to drown a dolphin and throw up on their shoes.

Next, we’ll lump together Valentine’s and Veterans Day because they both fall into the same category – which is, taking one day a year to honor those that should be honored every day.

Valentine’s Day? Great, if you own a flower store or peddle chocolates. But somehow, taking just one day out of the year to pledge your love and devotion to your mate after treating them like the neighbor’s noisy cat all year is a bit like donating money to the local volunteer fire company because your house is on fire.

As for Veterans Day, when you have kids a half a world away putting their lives on the line every waking hour, perhaps one day’s remembrance isn’t quite sufficient. And it’s certainly no reason to go without mail.

Flag Day I never could understand. It falls on June 14, the day back in 1778 the country’s flag was adopted by the Second Continental Congress. But the flag and what it represents, I believe, are covered in other bigger and better holidays, like the Fourth of July and Memorial Day. Once again, it only serves to inconvenience the general public by closing township buildings, suspending all local public services and denying mail delivery.

Next up is Groundhog Day, a great movie, but little else. Granted, this day is way down on the bogus holiday list, possibly even dropping below the old favorite, Arbor Day, in overall importance. But to its credit, Groundhog Day does not come with a perfunctory ban on mail delivery.

Also, Punxsutawney Phil is a better forecaster of the weather than most of those brain-dead, but fully breasted, weather people now bouncing across the local TV dials. But be that as it may, it’s about time to retire the rodent and hand February 2^nd over to a more deserving celebration.

As for Columbus Day, it’s blatantly bogus to honor some schmuck whose only purpose in coming to this land was to find gold and who was responsible for the torture and mutilation of the many natives he and his fellow discoverers came across after anchoring on what are now American shores.

Although come to think of it, old Chris would probably fit in perfectly with the current American mindset – get rich and hack up anyone that gets in the way.

As for me, I’ll continue to honor those days for which I get paid days off from work, and try to ignore those that mean less than nothing.

And I’ll try my damndest not to ruin anyone’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend.