Discussions

St. Patrick’s Day is apparently the largest festival to celebrate a particular nationality in the world. The celebrations will take place all over the globe: in the United States, where there are about 50 million people of Irish descent, parades will take place in most major cities, with the most famous being in New York, Boston, Chicago (where they dye the Chicago River itself green) and a particularly wild one in Savannah, Georgia; there will be large parades and many individual parties in London and other parts of Britain with large Irish communities; there will be parades in other parts of the world with Irish communities, in particular Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, Brussels, Paris and Canada; there will also be parades in unusual places, without enormous Irish expat communities, such as Moscow, Tokyo and even Beijing.  
 
In Ireland itself, there will be parades in practically every town and village of any size. In Dublin itself, St. Patrick’s Day has now become the “St. Patrick’s Day Festival”, with the celebrations taking place over five days.  
 
St. Patrick, as you probably know, is the patron saint of Ireland. He is thought to have been of Romano-British origin, and was probably born in Wales (there is a competing although far less plausible theory that he was from Brittany). His father was a Christian priest. After the Roman soldiers withdrew from Britain in 407, the island became the target of increasing raids and incursions by Irish tribes. Indeed, one tribe, in Latin called the Scotii, were to go on to form part of the Scottish people. On one of these raids, led by an Irish chieftain named Niall of the Nine Hostages, the 16-year-old Patrick was kidnapped and taken to Antrim.  
 
Patrick was forced into slavery in Ireland and worked as a shepherd for a druid named Milchu. He learnt Irish (Gaelic) and the customs of the local people. He escaped at the age of 22 under the direction of an angel. He took holy orders and went to live at a monastery in Auxerre, France. As a result of a vision, he travelled to Rome where he asked to return to Ireland and to convert the population there. He returned in 432. He is popularly credited with bringing Christianity to the island, but in fact a bishop, Palladius preceded him. Patrick set up his see at Armagh, which is still the seat of the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.  
 
Stories about St. Patrick abound. One story concerns his conversion of the High King of Ireland. Each year, all the fires in the land were extinguished around the time of the vernal equinox. The King would then light a sacred fire from which other fires would be lit, at Tara, the then capital of Ireland. Patrick went onto the nearby Hill of Slane and lit a fire there that could be seen for miles around. The King, in a rage, flew out to meet Patrick and kill him for his insolence. The fire, however, was miraculously inextinguishable and the King was full of awe at miracle. He converted on the spot.  
 
Another famous story concerns the explanation of the Holy Trinity. It is one of the most mysterious tenets of Catholic dogma and certainly difficult for most people to comprehend. At the time, some of the Gaelic druids decided to test Patrick by asking him to explain the Trinity and how it was possible. Patrick refused to argue. He simply picked up a piece of shamrock and said, “Look at the leaves on the shamrock. Like the Trinity, each leaf is one, yet it is also three”, thus neatly explaining the oxymoron yet sidestepping the endless theological debates that would take place over the next 1500 years (including part of the differences with the Orthodox Christian Church). It thus became one of the symbols of Ireland, including of the rugby team. Perhaps the most famous story credits him with driving the island’s snakes into the sea (there are no wild snakes in Ireland).  
 
Patrick became more than just an avatar of the Pope. He died in 461 and the presumed date of his death, March 17, became a feast day. It was celebrated by Irish Christians generally from that period onwards. The celebrations were then carried abroad by emigrants in later centuries, something which Ireland never lacked  
 
St. Patrick’s Day normally falls in the period of Lent. For good Catholics this, naturally enough, presented a problem in with merry-making. Traditionally, Catholics in Ireland see the day as a break from the fasting of Lent. Thus, smoking and drinking are indulged in, even against the Word of God. A perfectly Catholic solution! The attachment has grown, so much so that Guinness sees it as natural to promote a campaign in Canada to make St. Patrick’s Day a public holiday.  
 
The day gradually came to be seen as the day of the Irish Diaspora. Over the many years of emigration huge populations of Irish people became established abroad  
 
The day is also associated with Irish nationalism, oftentimes celebrated by the singing of rebel songs. As a result, the day is not normally celebrated by the unionist community of Northern Ireland. This is despite the fact that Patrick was in Ireland before there were any differences between Catholicism and Protestantism.  
 
And now, for those of you who read to the bottom of this diatribe, I say to you...  
 
"La le Padraig shona duit" ... Happy St Patrick's Day to all !!!!