Laws and Social Norms

As I see people walking around school in various shades of green today, I was reminiscing about the days in elementary and middle school when I would routinely get pinched for not wearing a green article of clothing on March 17 (fyi, technically St. Patrick's Day was this past Saturday due to Holy week). From the legal perspective, this is interesting. St. Patrick's Day is not even a federally recognized holiday, yet there is strict enforcement for not observing the holiday (people may stop pinching after elementary school, but even adults will make a snide comment here and there). Compare this to Christmas where you get the day off of work, but no one is going to physically harm you if you decide not to observe the holiday in any meaningful way.

The good side of this type of social norm is that it builds a cultural identity. Americans (and whoever else) can bond over the annual holiday where we celebrate the life of a saint by getting bombed at the local Irish pub and arbitrarily wear a certain bright color. However, the good comes with some bad. The development of cultural identity creates a sense of being an insider, but that naturally makes outsiders even further outside. If you know my family, you know we have no Irish ties in our bloodline. So apart from generally not knowing what day it was to begin with when I was a kid, my parents didn't treat March 17th as anything special (maybe because they had not received the gentle elementary school reminder to wear green). As a result, every March 17 was a pinch fest for me at school. While I didn't really appreciate it at the time, the pinches served as encouragement to align myself with social norms. Now, even though I still don't remember (or care to) wear green, I at least aware that I may be conspicuous for having not worn green. I'd say the enforcement of the social norms worked.