St. Patrick’s Day

Erin go braless! Wait, no. Not that. Where is the editor on this blog? Oh. That would be me. Sorry. Unless you’re reading this after five. In which case, you should be braless even if your name isn’t Erin.

The infamous Saint Patrick’s Day has come and mostly gone. On other years where the lucky holiday falls on a weekday, celebrations would continue into next weekend. With this pesky virus circulating, a muted St. Patty’s day for us all around.

Instead of dwelling on what we are missing, let’s take a walk in history. That’s safe from disease and death- erm. Well, anyway. Let’s move on.

St. Patrick started out life, allegedly, as the son of a deacon. He traveled to Ireland, where he’d make his mark on the world. Lots of stories have been told about the eventual patron saint of Ireland. He converted the whole island to Christianity, drove all of the snakes out of the country. What a guy, right? Who wouldn’t want him as a patron saint?

Seeing as he lived in the 5th century, the distance between the man and the myth is probably pretty wide. But that’s not to say we didn’t get some interesting stories. For example, one of his alleged teaching tools has stood the test of time and is arguably the holiday’s most recognized symbol. The shamrock.

I’ve been going about my whole life thinking the proliferation of shamrocks on this day was because they were prevalent in Ireland. But, that would be me operating under a false assumption. As the story goes, St. Patrick used shamrocks to teach the lesson of the Holy Trinity. Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and everyone is bedecked in the green clovers on March 17th.

But, that was not the only impact St. Patrick left on the zeitgeist.

St. Patrick isn’t a god, so he wouldn’t fit in exactly with Neil Gaiman’s old god crew from American Gods. But, his success story in the new world certainly does. While he is the patron saint of Ireland, his holiday’s makeover didn’t happen in Ireland. No, the holiday came to its prominence in America. Say it with me. Thank you, Potato Famine.

It was only a matter of time before I wheeled that out. The influx of Irish immigrants during the 1840s brought with them Catholic traditions. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal if those traditions weren’t part of the reason for so many earlier settlers had immigrated to avoid. Tension, squabbling, and downright hatred ensued.

Enter the feast of St. Patrick. For a while, the day was an excellent way for the Irish community to nettle the preexisting Protestants. They put all of their Catholic superstitions on display and had a good time doing it.

Popular opinion is slow to change, but eventually, the Irish community wasn’t as bad as initially believed to be. This switch could have heralded the end to the celebration. St. Patrick soldiered on. The day quickly became a vehicle for celebrating Irish culture as well as the man who brought Christianity to the Emerald Isle. Even non-Catholics joined in the festivities to revel and celebrate Irish heritage. Enter those “Kiss me, I’m Irish” shirts, glasses, ties, etc.

When you hear the phrase, St. Patrick’s Day, I am going to guess the first thing you think of is drinking. Time has made the day synonymous with partying, drinking, and disorderly conduct. Like the shamrocks, I used the power of assumption to guess the root cause. And like most times anyone taps into the power of assumption, I was wrong.

St. Patrick’s feast lands in the middle of Lent. A fact that has passed me by growing up in a mostly Catholic household. For any practicing Catholic, that would exclude reveling in food and drink. At least, that’s what I thought. Lent was put on hold for the observation of the feast of St. Patrick, meaning that even in the holiday’s infancy, it was tied to a day of hearty eating and drinking.

That early sense of relief from fasting was the foundation for what we are more familiar with today, but there is more to it than that. On March 17th, people feel they have permission to go out and drink themselves into a stupor because of the escalation of the “drunk Irishman” stereotype, undermining the whole idea of Irish pride.

People don’t change all that much. Just as we are reading about anti-immigration stories today, so to were the Protestant communities as hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants flooded cities like Boston and New York. They didn’t want “those people” in their neighborhoods. So, what did they do? Start a smear campaign to prey on their community for support. And were they successful! So successful, we are still carrying the drunk stereotype around. Over a hundred years later.

I’ll stop now to let that one sink in, Nerd Girls. Till next time!