Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I got this in an email from a friend. It puts a whole new slant on the holiday! ENJOY!

WHY ST. PATRICK'S DAY IS CELEBRATED EACH YEAR IN AMERICA

The reason the Irish celebrate St. Patrick's Day is because

this is when St. Patrick drove the Norwegians out of Ireland.

It seems that some centuries ago, many Norwegians came to

Ireland to escape the bitterness of the Norwegian winter. Ireland was

having a famine at the time, and food was scarce. The Norwegians were

eating almost all the fish caught in the area, leaving the Irish with

nothing to eat but potatoes. St. Patrick, taking matters into his own

hands, as most Irishmen do, decided the Norwegians had to go.

Secretly, he organized the Irish IRATRION (Irish Republican Army to

Rid Ireland of Norwegians)

Irish members of IRATRION passed a law in Ireland that

prohibited merchants from selling ice boxes or ice to the Norwegians, in

hopes that their fish would spoil. This would force the Norwegians to

flee to a colder climate where their fish would keep. Well, the fish

spoiled, all right, but the Norwegians, as every one knows today, thrive

on spoiled fish. So, faced with failure, the desparate Irishmen

sneaked into the Norwegian fish storage caves in the dead of night and

sprinkled the rotten fish with lye, hoping to poison the Norwegian

invaders.

But, as everyone knows, the Norwegians thought this only

added to the flavor of the fish, and they liked it so much they decided

to call it "lutefisk", which is Norwegian for "lucious fish".

Matters became even worse for the Irishmen when the Norwegians started

taking over the Irish potato crop and making something called

"lefse". Poor St. Patrick was at his wit's end, and finally on March

17th, he blew his top and told all the Norwegians to "GO TO HELL".

So they all got in their boats and emigrated to Minnesota or the Dakotas

---- the only other paradise on earth where smelly fish, old potatoes

and plenty of cold weather can be found in abundance.

The End.