Happy Day of Saint Pádraic

I grew up thinking St. Patrick’s Day was all about snakes and green beer.

It’s actually a cultural and religious holiday commemorating the arrival of Christianity in Ireland but judging by the inebriated crowds in and outside of any bar named O’Dooley’s, Dublin Pub, Kelly’s, Lucky’s, O’Shaughnessy’s, Paddy O’Malley’s or any other Irish-sounding name on the 17th of March, it’s an occasion to wear green clothes, drink green beer and demonstrate decidedly intemperate behavior, all in the name of the patron saint of Ireland, Patrick.

Legend has it that St. Patrick banished all snakes from Ireland by chasing them into the sea after they attacked him while he was fasting on a hilltop. (In reality, evidence suggests that post-glacial Ireland never had snakes.) I learned only recently that the world’s first snake whisperer was actually a Christian missionary who was active in Ireland during the second half of the 5th Century.

I vaguely remember riding on the Ancient Order of Hibernians’ float during Detroit’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade one year when I was a very young boy, although I don’t recall how the festivities were explained to me, if at all. (The Ancient Order of Hibernians is an Irish Catholic fraternal organization. My natural father was Irish Catholic.) Perhaps my parents told me St. Paddy’s Day is all about celebrating Irish culture, and perhaps that’s why for years I assumed Irish culture was all about drinking until you can’t stand up, admiring scantily-clad women who may or may not actually be of Irish heritage, searching for pots of gold underneath weather phenomena and never having to eat another potato as long as you lived if you were lucky enough to find a clover with four leaves instead of three.

Today, St. Patrick's Day is probably the most widely celebrated saint's day in the world, celebrated in Great Britain, Canada, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand as well as here and in the Emerald Isle. If it were any other Christian missionary being honored, I’d expect the celebration to be a solemn and reserved affair. But this is the badass dude who rid an entire nation of slithering reptiles, so bottoms up!