It never fails. Every year Cinco de Mayo rolls around, a flood of enlightened blog posts and videos are not far behind. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to see that every year new editions of the Cinco de Mayo post are being written to make fun of people who “celebrate” the 5th of May in all the wrong ways.
But now going on years and years, decades even, of satirical blog posts and videos about how people don’t really know the meaning of Cinco de Mayo, or how it’s just a holiday for “Americans” or how Mexicans really don’t celebrate it. It’s all fun and good. But at this point, I think it’s become just as cliché to make fun of these Cinco de Mayors as the margarita holiday itself because every year, bloggers bring up the same jokes and sarcastic reverse stereotyping…I’ve become a little blind to these videos and posts now. They’re still funny decades later…but when you’ve seen the same material hashed up, can’t help but to feel “over” the whole topic.
So what to do? It’s not going away. Offices across the land will still go to lunches and happy hours at their local Mexican Restaurants, Corporations leaning on the holiday, will continue to laugh at these skits all the way to the bank.
Let’s just agree it’s a re-mangled holiday, just like many of the other holidays we’ve doused with gimmick marketing and advertising. But whatever, I’m looking forward to next year’s Cinco de Mayo posts!
*Note I’ve put “Americans” in quotations, since I recently saw a 5/5/2012 video that said the key to throwing a Cinco celebration was to invite 2 “Americans” which of the entire video I thought was the funniest bit of all and not for the obvious. The “Americans” that entered the scene were Caucasian, so at least in the planning of the vid, they put serious consideration on not calling the “Americans” – Gringo or White people.
