Ireland still has two holidays that shut down the country for the day each year. One is Christmas and the other is Good Friday.

 On the eve of the latter, it's a good bit like Christmas Eve here. People are in a frenzy to buy enormous trolleys full of food and, of course alcohol. After all, the shops and bars are closed tomorrow, Friday.

We trundled over to the Tesco in Drogheda (a huge supermarket where small airplanes could land in the car park) to get a few things. But it was pure madness. 

Moms, dads and children were all running wild through this multi-acre facility buying everything in sight. Some had two trolleys; one for food, the other for beer, spirits and wine. 

You'd think by watching this exhibition that some sort of natural disaster was predicted and that this was the last  day to prepare for famine and sobriety in the times ahead.

But, hey, it's just a day. On Saturday the world starts up again, the boozers are reopened and the supermarkets and everything else that's survived our ruined economy opens their doors.

Inconspicuously missing through the day was anything representing the real reason there is a Good Friday. This is a country, an island, that endured hundreds of years of persecution by England because it held onto its Catholic faith.

But the crucifixion of Jesus that Good Friday represents is missing in all of this madness to fill up trolleys, buy chocolate eggs and stuffed bunnies, find presents for the kiddies and other secular baloney.

The whole premise behind Good Friday (and Christmas) is really lost. It's time for Ireland to leap forward and admit that closed shops, bars and pretty much everything else on these days is just outdated and hypocritcal.