The Real St. Patrick’s Day
March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day, a day to claim Irish descent, real or imagined, dress in green, drink a few green beers and toast to good health and little hardship.
We all become Irish on St. Paddy’s Day. The day has become synonymous with parties and drunkenness in most places. But the Irish view the celebration of St. Patrick differently. “It’s actually more important to us,” my friend from Ireland told me. “It’s our national identity in a country with so many different origins of nationality. If you look at our history and how sad it’s been, it’s a miracle we can celebrate.”
I asked him why we aspire to be Irish on this one day of the year. His reply was, “Oh! Why wouldn’t everyone like to be carefree and jolly? That’s the picture we Irish used to paint of ourselves. We didn’t have any expectations of ourselves in terms of leadership and achievement, so we were okay with making fun of ourselves.”
While St. Patrick’s Day is now a national holiday in Ireland as well as a religious feast day, a few hundred years ago the emphasis was on spirituality and provided a much needed break from the austerities of Lent where all Lenten restrictions would be set aside for the day.
St. Patrick’s Day, was regarded as the middle of spring, no matter how bad the weather might be and the good saint promised better weather from March 17th onward. Farmers planted their potato crops at that time, although no one did much work on the big day itself.
The “wearing o’ the green” is a custom taken up by those of us outside Ireland. Wearing a shamrock or homemade paper cross would be customary for the Irish. “We never wore any more green than that,” said Bridget Haggerty, author of an article, Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Old Ireland. “To do so, according to my mother, would have been too great a temptation for the fairies! She was a firm believer in the old superstition that green was their favorite color and they’d spirit away any child fully-garbed in green.”
So how did we come by St. Patrick and the tradition of celebrating his life? Patrick was born in the late 300s A.D. in Wales or Scotland, the traditions are unclear. Near the end of the Roman occupation of England, Irish raiders captured Patrick and sold him into slavery in Ireland. After six years of servitude, Patrick escaped to France, where he studied for the priesthood. He asked to be assigned to Ireland. Knowing the cu
stoms of the people as he did, he thought he could convert the warring kinds and pagan priests. Because the Irish believed the earth to be a mystical place, Patrick built on those beliefs rather than dwell on the sinfulness of man, as was being stressed throughout Europe. Because of this focus, the Irish embraced Christianity as a celebration of the earth, of the human experience and the human body.
There is a legend that says on the last day, Christ will judge all the other nations, but St. Patrick will sit in judgment of the Irish. In an interview with an author of Irish history, Thomas Cahill, he was asked if this was good or bad news for the Irish. He didn’t hesitate in saying, “That’s great news for the Irish!”
March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day, a day to claim Irish descent, real or imagined, dress in green, drink a few green beers and toast to good health and little hardship.
We all become Irish on St. Paddy’s Day. The day has become synonymous with parties and drunkenness in most places. But the Irish view the celebration of St. Patrick differently. “It’s actually more important to us,” my friend from Ireland told me. “It’s our national identity in a country with so many different origins of nationality. If you look at our history and how sad it’s been, it’s a miracle we can celebrate.”
I asked him why we aspire to be Irish on this one day of the year. His reply was, “Oh! Why wouldn’t everyone like to be carefree and jolly? That’s the picture we Irish used to paint of ourselves. We didn’t have any expectations of ourselves in terms of leadership and achievement, so we were okay with making fun of ourselves.”
While St. Patrick’s Day is now a national holiday in Ireland as well as a religious feast day, a few hundred years ago the emphasis was on spirituality and provided a much needed break from the austerities of Lent where all Lenten restrictions would be set aside for the day.
St. Patrick’s Day, was regarded as the middle of spring, no matter how bad the weather might be and the good saint promised better weather from March 17th onward. Farmers planted their potato crops at that time, although no one did much work on the big day itself.
The “wearing o’ the green” is a custom taken up by those of us outside Ireland. Wearing a shamrock or homemade paper cross would be customary for the Irish. “We never wore any more green than that,” said Bridget Haggerty, author of an article, Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Old Ireland. “To do so, according to my mother, would have been too great a temptation for the fairies! She was a firm believer in the old superstition that green was their favorite color and they’d spirit away any child fully-garbed in green.”
So how did we come by St. Patrick and the tradition of celebrating his life? Patrick was born in the late 300s A.D. in Wales or Scotland, the traditions are unclear. Near the end of the Roman occupation of England, Irish raiders captured Patrick and sold him into slavery in Ireland. After six years of servitude, Patrick escaped to France, where he studied for the priesthood. He asked to be assigned to Ireland. Knowing the cu
stoms of the people as he did, he thought he could convert the warring kinds and pagan priests. Because the Irish believed the earth to be a mystical place, Patrick built on those beliefs rather than dwell on the sinfulness of man, as was being stressed throughout Europe. Because of this focus, the Irish embraced Christianity as a celebration of the earth, of the human experience and the human body.There is a legend that says on the last day, Christ will judge all the other nations, but St. Patrick will sit in judgment of the Irish. In an interview with an author of Irish history, Thomas Cahill, he was asked if this was good or bad news for the Irish. He didn’t hesitate in saying, “That’s great news for the Irish!”
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