TOP OF THE EVENING TO YOU!

You had your St. Patrick’s Day, now let’s celebrate St. Joseph’s Day, a day that every March 19^th, I got cream puffs made especially for me because my name is Joseph. The tradition in the old neighborhood in Brooklyn for Italians was to celebrate the day with St. Joseph Cream Puffs, and if you were named Joseph, you got a dollar.

Being a saintly man, I miss the cream puffs and the dollar: in fact I miss Brooklyn days of the 1950’s.

Joseph (Hebrew יוֹסֵף, Yosef; Syriac: ܝܘܤܦ Yosip; Greek: Ἰωσήφ, Ioseph) is how they say it. Biblically, there were many Josephs, but not all saints like me. Four sisters qualify me for sainthood automatically.

The first appearance of Joseph is in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Each contains a genealogy of Jesus tracing his ancestry back to King David, but the two are from different sons of David! But, royalty is royalty. I descend from Regina Francesca, queen of pasta and pepperoni, truly a queen. She is also known as Grandma Frances.

The REAL St. Joseph

And so today, eat something Italian, drink some wine and celebrate the day. The color is green just like Patrick, but with a red side to it. (sauce) We refrain from parades because we don’t want to get into that gay marching controversy that plague St. Patrick Day parades every year. Instead, we march to the refrigerator and avoid the winds of March and the street garbage of New York City.