Regarding violent people and their holidays--
I remember as if it were yesterday an event from the 1960s, when I must have
been 12 or 13.  We were watching the St. Patrick's Day parade from the roof
of my aunt's building in South Boston, Mass.  As you may guess, this was and
remains a huge holiday on the Roman Catholic calendar in Boston.  As the
parade slowly made its way up the street, an open flatbed bearing "colored
people" came into view.  It was the NAACP float.  What unfolded next, I have
never forgotten.  At some signal, hundreds of beer bottles and other debris
flew through the air and descended with great accuracy on the helpless
people riding on the truck. They were completely exposed, and because the
parade was moving very slowly the truck could not escape.  I don't remember
police arriving, but they probably did.  What I do remember is wondering why
these "colored people," of whom I knew very little, were so despicable as to
deserve this.  What had they done? Boston was rigidly segregated, and my
Irish/Polish community had only the slightest contact with Boston's
African-Americans, some of whose families had been there since before the
Revolution.  This event took place before the busing/school integration
crisis, which was in the 1970s.  

So great and so persistent was the violence and mayhem of all kinds
associated with the St. Patrick's Day parade, that the event was eventually
shifted from March 17 to the nearest Sunday, a day when the liquor stores
are closed.  

Henry Wiencek