17 March 2004
Happy St. Patrick’s Day
Posted by Zane under: Personal .
I just wanted wish everyone a happy St. Patrick’s Day! I am going to give a little background information on St. Patrick.
Who Is St. Patrick?
St. Patricks Day honors Ireland’s patron saint, who is believed to have died on March 17th, 461. What started out as a religious holiday in Ireland has become a day for parades and celebrations worldwide. Participation is by no means limited to people of Irish descent.
St. Patrick is creditited with converting to Irish to Christianity in the fifth century. The details of his life are sketchy, coming from tow sources: his spiritual biography, “Confessio,” and a letter he wrote denouncing British mistreatment of the Irish Christians.
Patrick was born in Britain at a time with Roman rule was in decline. When Patrick was 16, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken as a slave. After six years working as a heardsman for his master, he escaped and returned to Britain.
After being ordained, Patrick had a dream in which the Irish people asked him to return. He felt he was choosen by God to bring Christianity to the pagans in Ireland. Scholars say Patrick’s time is slavery helped shape his belief that the Irish were not barbarians, as many in the Christian world believed.
Myths: Many legends have grown up around St. Patrick. He is said to have used the shamrock - - to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity to the uneducated Irish. The shamrock is now the national flower of Ireland, and its image is used in St. Patrick’s Day celebrations worldwide.
Another my is that Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland and into the sea. While it is true that Ireland is one of the few inhabited area on Earth that has no snakes, the reason is rooted in science. Ireland had already seperated from the mainland before the end of the last Ice Age, about 18,000 years ago. Snakes couldn’t survive on Ireland when it was frozen, and they had no way to get there once it warmed up. (The same holds true for New Zealand, which is also snakeless.
The Holiday: St. Patrick’s Day was a religious celebration in Ireland for hundreds of years. It was only when Irish immigrants brought their traditions with them to their new homes that St. Patrick’s Day morphed into a secular celebration of Irish heritage.
On the Emerald Isle itself, St. Patrick’s Day was mainly a day to go to church until recently. The celebration in Dublin involved a small parade until the mid - 1990’s. This year, the capital of the Irish Republic is holding a weeklong St. Patrick Festival. Belfast, in Northern Ireland, didn’t hold a St. Patrick’s Day parade until 1998.
New York has the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world, with more that 150,000 marchers (no floats or automobiles are allowed). Large celebrations are also held in Boston, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, and Savannah, Georgia, where Irish immigrants first marched in a St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1824.
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