A Brief History of St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day is coming. Get out your pint glass, and dye the river green. Everybody's Irish on March 17. Join the parade.

So why do we celebrate St. Patrick's Day? To honor St. Patrick on the day of his death, March 17, 461. Technically. According to Michael Cronin and Daryl Adair, authors of The Wearing of the Green: The History of Saint Patrick's Day, in 1631 Pope Urban VIII declared March 17 the "Feast of St. Patrick." However, it had been on the Irish legal calendar as far back as 1607, so it was certainly an Irish holiday before it was a Catholic holiday. It's still a distinctly Irish holiday--with all of the leprechauns and shamrocks and green decorations how can we deny it's an "Irish" holiday?

Despite and regardless of the decorative paraphernalia, St. Patrick's Day is Irish in origin. St. Patrick is a beloved superhero in Ireland. The most common feat attributed to the saint is his ridding Ireland of snakes--sometime in the fifth century he stood on a hill with his staff and banished all snakes to the sea. Whether this story is true or not depends on your definition of snake. No legless serpents cursed to crawl on their bellies and eat dust live now or have ever lived in Ireland. (For an explanation of why, visit this Smithsonian National Zoological Park Web site.) Webster's Collegiate Dictionary offers another definition for snake: "A worthless or treacherous fellow." In the eyes of the island's later Christians, the country's original pagan inhabitants certainly fit this second definition. These legendary snakes then were just a metaphor for heathenism.

St. Patrick

Born Maewyn Succat around AD 416 in Roman Britain, likely in Wales, his first trip to Ireland was not voluntary. He was abducted by Irish marauders when he was 16 years old, was enslaved, and became a shepherd in what is now County Antrim. According to his Confessio, an angel appeared to him after 6 years of enslavement telling him to escape and go back to his homeland--England (Cronin and Adair, 2002).