WHO
Who are we celebrating, and who are the key players that made this happen?
Unlike St. Valentine and Valentine’s Day, there is no mystery as to whom St. Patrick’s Day is celebrating.
St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, and lived during the fifth century A.D. (after year 1). Though he is forever and always associated with Ireland, St. Patrick was actually born in Roman Britain. How then, did he become the patron saint of Ireland?
I found two theories as to how St. Patrick, who’s given name was Succat, ended up in Ireland. The more widely accepted one is that at the unripened age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates. He was enslaved as a sheep herder, forced into isolation for six years with no company save for his sheep and his Christianity. He apparently prayed hundreds of times per day and began getting visions and messages from angels, one of whom helped him escape his enslavement and return home to Great Britain and his family.
The other theory comes from Roy Flechner, author of Saint Patrick Retold: The Legend and History of Ireland's Patron Saint, who thinks it more likely that the young Succat voluntarily escaped to Ireland to rid himself of the inheritance of the family business: Roman tax collection. Flechner goes further to hypothesize that rather than being enslaved, Succat became a slave trader himself, because he “proclaimed himself a wealthy man at a time when Ireland lacked a monetary economy and slave-trading was one of the few lucrative businesses.”
Regardless of how he got to Ireland, he was there, then returned home to Great Britain sometime later. Apparently, his family begged him to not leave again, but the voices and visions did not cease, and he claims to have heard the Irish calling out to him. He underwent religious training, became a deacon, and then later a bishop, which is when he was given the name Patricius.
Patricius requested a post in Ireland, landing once again on the island full of pagans, and aiding in converting thousands into Christians by the time he died.
Besides the man of the hour, some other key players that contributed to the continued celebrations are:
The Irish—quite obvious but should be noted because they have been celebrating the earliest of us all, since the ninth or tenth century.
Irish vicor Ricardo Artur, was the first to organize a celebration in America.
WHERE
Where was St. Patrick’s Day celebrated, and where is it celebrated now?
Getting the obvious out of the way yet again, IRELAND. The Irish were the first to celebrate and of course continue to celebrate today.
AMERICA: the first St. Patrick’s Day parade was actually held in America, not in Ireland. That Irish vicor I mentioned earlier, Ricardo Artur, organized the first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in a Spanish colony, what is now St. Augustine, Florida, and then a St. Patrick’s Day Parade the following year. There was also a march done by Irish soldiers who were homesick while in New York City. This must have caught on, because New York hosts the largest parade and celebrations every year, followed by Boston.
INTERNATIONAL: Outside of the United States, other countries have also been found to celebrate, such as: Japan, Singapore, and Russia.
WHEN
If you haven’t picked up on it yet, pay attention: We celebrate St. Patrick’s Day every year on March 17th because this was the day he died in the year 461.
Since the 9th or 10th century, the Irish have been celebrating.
1600 is when Ricardo Artur organized the first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in America.
March 17, 1601 marks the first documented St. Patrick’s Day parade, also organized by Ricardo Artur.
March 17, 1772 was when the homesick Irish soldiers marched a parade in New York City.
WHAT/WHY
What are we celebrating when we don green in the name of St. Patrick?
The short answer is his life, as March 17th marks his death, which is believed to have been in the year 461.
The longer answer encompasses many things, and what it encompasses also feeds the explanation as to why we celebrate. So, here we go:
St. Patrick became St. Patrick because he is known for bringing Christianity to Ireland and its people. If you think about it, St. Patrick’s day is a celebration of the spread of Christianity to the Irish. This is what the first observances by the peoples of Ireland were commemorating—St. Patrick’s Day began as a Roman Catholic religious feast day.
Speeding through history and landing on more modern times, I believe what most people, at least in the United States, have come to celebrate is Irish pride, or Irish culture if you are not Irish yourself. This could simply be because so much time has passed that we have forgotten how this celebration came to be, and that is what we know it as, but I also believe it is connected to the Potato Famine that caused so many Irish to have to flee to the states in order to avoid the fate of starvation.
In the mid 1840’s is when the influx of Irish immigration occurred because of the famine. True to U.S. nature, the people that were here already didn’t like it, for whatever they deemed reasonable, and the Irish were seen in negative lights more often than not.
The Irish began organizing, though, realizing that their number had grown large. Once politicians realized that they could swing the “green machine” votes, which is what they were called, during election times, the Irish went from victims of famine to empowered Irish-Americans. Thus igniting the fire of Irish pride in America, which was capped off with the president’s appearance at a St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1948, a message to the country to back the f*ck off of the Irish with stereotypes and prejudicial bullshit.
HOW
How was St. Patrick’s Day celebrated then, and how is it celebrated now?
When the Irish were celebrating back in the 800-900’s and on, it was a feast day. Yas, bring on the food.
Later came the parades, a tradition that obviously never died, as well as the feasting. Not everyone feasts or eats Irish foods, but many people do make Irish recipes, the most popular being corned beef and cabbage, but there is also Irish bacon and potatoes.
Up to the 1970’s, Irish pubs used to close in observance of the holiday. This stopped when the realization came that money could be made on this day, especially in the 1990’s when tourism grew. Now, the pubs stay open for the purpose of economic growth.
Nowadays, we also do things like wear green, which really does not have anything to do with St. Patrick, unless you consider the legend about St. Patrick and the three-leaf clover or shamrock (he used it as a teaching device for the holy trinity). In fact, St. Patrick used to be associated with the color blue, and the color green and the pinching? That comes from fairy lore and leprechauns, but maybe I’ll get into that next year.
As is my new tradition, here are links to the Apple and Spotify St. Patrick’s Day playlists.
I hope you enjoyed learning about the origins of St. Patrick’s Day as much as I did.
Until next time,
XOXO-Jitsie
Sources:
History of St. Patrick’s Day. History.com Editors. HISTORY. https://www.history.com/topics/st-patricks-day/history-of-st-patricks-day. Accessed March 6, 2024. Original Published Date October 27, 2009
St Patrick: Kidnapped by Pirates and Enslaved at 16. Christopher Klein. HISTORY. https://www.history.com/news/st-patrick-slavery-pirate-kidnapping-real-facts. Date Accessed March 6, 2024. Original Published Date March 13, 2019
St. Patrick’s Day. Rose Davidson. National Geographic Kids. https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/celebrations/article/st-patricks-day. Date Accessed March 6, 2024