Interesting answers. 5A, I take your point about mellowing out a bit and appreciating the fact that people have embraced our holiday (I don't think you said that directly, but I gathered that's what you were trying to get at). There is the alcoholism issue, though...as sky_dancer reflects, this can be very hard on people who have had it tear their families apart, and maybe that's part of what's bothering me...it's like people think they are "imitating" Irish behaviour by getting stoned drunk, and it's hard not to take that a bit personally.

Luckily the alcoholism largely eluded my Mom's generation of our family, though her brother came close. Lots of Catholics on that side of the family as well. No real fisticuffs at our get-togethers, though we have some real heavyweights.

I've always wondered if there was a link between mental illness and heavily Catholic cultures, given the nature of Catholicism, with its rituals, heavy emphasis on guilt, etc. I'm part Italian as well, and we have mental illness on both the Irish and Italian sides of the family.