A gringo's take on Cinco de Mayo

As with many in California, Cinco de Mayo is always a great time of the year for me.
It’s like a Mexican St. Patrick’s Day with worse liquor and better food.
Despite being a Diablo Blanco, I am a fifth-generation Californian, and therefore love Mexican culture (re: Gulp Fiction posting “And We’re Cruising Together – A Day in Mexico, Part Two,” Jan. 29), and, most of all, Mexican food.
It just comes with growing up here.
As humans, as strong as our lineage and ties to our past may be, we are who are surroundings dictate. We are products of our environment.
Though I may be of Scottish-German ancestry, taco trucks, Coronas, Tapatio, ceviche, salsa verde and tortas are more of a part of my culture and identity than strudel, lederhosen, kilts, haggis and socialism will ever be.
So Cinco de Mayo is a part of me as much as it is anyone. It is the inevitable result of the beauty of the melting pot of multiculturalism that we enjoy here in America, and, to a greater extent, California.
Some Mexicans I know (and self-hating liberal whites as well) have told me that a white man has no business celebrating Cinco de Mayo, which I believe is nonsense.
To tell a gringo that he can’t celebrate Cinco de Mayo because he is white is like telling a Mexican that he can’t celebrate the Fourth of July because no Mexicans signed the Declaration of Independence.
Any holiday, anytime, should welcome everyone. Holidays are not a time for getting screwed; we get enough of that at the pumps.
Cinco de Mayo is just a fun time for all and that is what makes it so great – it is the perfect time to show off the amazing bounty of food, music and history of Mexico.
Any place that invented the tamale and guacamole has something to show the rest of the world as far as I am concerned.
Holidays really are the best way to bring people together because, as I have always believed, the first step toward getting along with another is food.
To eat with another, you must sit with another; sitting with another leads to talking to another; talking to another leads to understanding another; and understanding is the first step toward embracing another as a brother or a sister, despite nationality.
Besides, maybe it is the German blood flowing through my veins or the American heart beating in my chest, but any holiday that celebrates kicking the cheese out of the French is just fine in my book.
And that is something that Americans and Mexicans can certainly agree on.