Constable: Why Cinco de Mayo makes a great American holiday

Today is the great American holiday of Cinco de Mayo. Once marked with small, ethnic festivities in limited communities, Cinco de Mayo now is celebrated throughout the suburbs as if it were St. Patrick's Day.

Well, that's not quite accurate. It's bigger in one sense. For the 2013 celebration of Cinco de Mayo, Americans bought $600 million worth of beer, according to Andrea Riberi of Nielsen, the market research company that monitors consumer habits. That's more beer than is sold for St. Patrick's Day.

"It's the American phenomenon of Cinco de Mayo," says Jaime Garcia, executive director and co-founder of Centro de Información, an Elgin-based social service that provides a wide range of counseling, education and advocacy programs. While Cinco de Mayo remains a minor holiday in Mexico, Garcia says it "turns out to be a beer holiday" in the United States.

"The beer companies do a great job of marketing that holiday," agrees Brian Grano, owner of Mickey Finn's restaurant and brewery in downtown Libertyville. The website for Mickey Finn's features the addition of a sombrero-wearing, mustachioed guitar player, and the eatery will offer plenty of Mexican food items today, even if its Mickey Finn's Cerveza lager won't be ready until later this week.

"It will be a really good Tuesday, but it won't even sniff St. Patrick's Day," says Grano, who notes that, after all, his business does have Irish roots.

Immigrants give us all the best holidays. In addition to all the religious holidays, immigrants brought along Halloween and Valentine's Day. The first St. Patrick's Day Parade was held in 1762 in New York City, not Ireland, but it was hosted by Irish soldiers serving in the British army. As more and more waves of Irish immigrants reached our shores, St. Patrick's Day became an American holiday.

Odd as it seems, 89 percent of Hispanics celebrate St. Patrick's Day, while only 86 percent celebrate Cinco de Mayo, according to a Nielsen study fielded by Harris Poll of 1,951 adults in 2014. That doesn't surprise Garcia.

"It's really not a big deal," Garcia says of Cinco de Mayo, suggesting that many Americans might be confused about its origins. "How many of these Americans celebrating Cinco de Mayo think it's Mexican Independence Day?"

We don't celebrate Mexico's Independence Day on Sept. 16 because if we toasted the Independence Day of every immigrant's ancestral home, Americans probably would be too hung over to celebrate our own Fourth of July.

The first reference to Cinco de Mayo in the Daily Herald came in 1971, when our food section touted the holiday in a recipe for rolled beef enchiladas. We ran a couple of short stories in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter celebrated Cinco de Mayo during a visit to California. By 1981, the Daily Herald was selling advertising space to local Mexican restaurants offering $1.25 tequila drinks as part of "the official celebration of Cinco de Mayo!"

We've come a long way since Cinco de Mayo was an obscure foreign holiday (think Bastille Day) that once had a confused editor asking, "When is Cinco de Mayo this year?" The U.S. Postal Service issued a Cinco de Mayo stamp in 1998. Congress passed a resolution in 2005 calling on the president to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

"Welcome to El Jardin de las Rosas. It's a great place to celebrate Cinco de Mayo," President George W. Bush said during one of his White House holiday celebrations in the Rose Garden that showcased a mariachi band, sombreros and his ability to joke around in Spanish. "As a matter of fact, I've been looking forward to celebrating this so much that we decided to have our own Cuatro de Mayo."

While the holiday clearly opens the door to political speeches about immigration reform, President Barack Obama kicked off the 2012 celebration at the White House by proclaiming, "Let's party. Let's have a good time. Feliz Cinco de Mayo."

You can dismiss Cinco de Mayo as a beer-sales gimmick or celebrate it as a cultural nod to our neighbors to the south. But the Mexican holiday plays a key role in American history.

On May 5, 1862, a small band of Mexican soldiers defeated a much larger French army in the Battle of Puebla, forcing France to dedicate more resources and troops into their war with Mexico. Had the Mexicans lost that battle, France might have been able to send military aid and manpower to the Confederate army fighting the Civil War, giving the Rebels a leg up on the Union troops.

In the Land of Lincoln, we can celebrate Cinco de Mayo with the knowledge that, had those Mexicans lost on May 5, Honest Abe's birthday might not enjoy state holiday status.