So a saint walks into a bar and orders a whiskey…

And thus begins one version of how drinking on St. Patrick’s Day became so friggin’ cool.

Getty

So as we understand it (which isn’t a whole lot), this guy St. Patrick is the official saint of Ireland. Apparently he was responsible for a bunch of miracles or something?

We sort of like to think of him as the Miracle Max of Ireland.

The binge drinking custom that we hold so dear comes from an old Irish legend involving the saint himself. Legend has it, ole St. Patrick walked into a bar and was given a measure of whiskey that was pretty lame.

Annoyed by his lack of booze, Patrick decided to teach a lesson of generosity to the innkeeper. He told the dude that a huge devil monster lived in his cellar, feeding off of the innkeeper’s lies.  The only way to get the monster out was to stop lying.

When St. Patrick came back to check on the guy, he found the bartender way overfilling patrons’ drinks. He had a good laugh to himself, then told the guy that the devil monster had starved to death, and decreed that lots of boozy drinks should be consumed on his feast day.

We’re not quite sure how accurate that is, but we’ll buy it.

BONUS:

Scorpions – “Miracle”

[metrolyrics artist="scorpions" song="miracle"]

[Source: About]