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Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 

My apologies to all of you who celebrated on Saturday, but I was busy with my birthday and couldn't be bothered with the holiday of a long-dead saint.

 

Out of curiousity, do any of you know why you celebrated St. Patrick's Day on Saturday? No, not because it is easier to get drunk and revel on a Saturday as opposed to a Monday. Actually, it is because March 17 is a Roman Catholic feast day. By order of the church, the celebration of a feast day cannot happen during Holy Week (which begins today). The last time this happened was in 1940, when the celebration was observed on April 3. Now, this year; the next time it will happen is 2160.

 

How about St. Patrick? What do you all know about him? As it turns out, he isn't even Irish. He was born in Britain sometime in the end of the 4th century. At the age of 16 he was captured as a slave and taken to Ireland to work. For six years he labored as a sheep herder, until he escaped back to Britain. Eventually, he felt a calling and returned to Ireland as a missionary and began teaching Christianity to the people. There are tons of legend and lore about him, one of the most common being the driving of the snakes out of Ireland. Historians seem to agree that this was not representative of actual snakes, but likely references the Druids and their religion, prevalent at the time. It is also said that he used the shamrock to teach Christianity by using the three leaves to represent the Holy Trinity.

 

Finally, let's talk about the green. Apparently, green is not at all the color that symbolizes St. Patrick. He is known for wearing blue and was always represented by the color. Sometime around 1750, the celebrations of the west bastardized the tradition and turned the color into green, which most people associate with Ireland.

 

There you have it, a brief tutorial in why people go out of their way to get drunk this time of year. Hooray for St. Patrick, the British-born, not-really-a-saint person, who may or may not have died on March 17 in either 461 or 493 A. D.