Saint Patrick’s Day, unmistakable bright kelly green and drunken revelers. Have I really done 10 years of blog posts and never wrote on this? In the US, the first St Patrick Day celebration was in a Spanish Settlement in St Augustine Florida in 16011. Boston, while predominately Protestant, held a St Patrick’s day parade in 1737. New York followed until 25 years later. Chicago, infamous for dying the river green, held their first parade was in 1843. The Chicago celebration was by Irish victims of British discrimination and marginalization. The Irish gathered in Chicago in solidarity that the same would not happen in the US. But wait, there is more.
The Catholic Church designated St Patricks Day, a feast and holy day of obligation in the early 17th century. It has been suggested the popularity of the feast is because St Patrick’s day falls during lent. Lent is a time of abstinence, St Patrick’s Day is a holy day of obligation offers a reprieve. St Patrick’s Day is a lent loophole. And yet, as I try to keep this brief, there is more.
St Patrick was not Irish. He was British, kidnapped by the Irish and enslaved.
According to Patrick’s autobiographical Confessio, when he was about sixteen, he was captured by Irish pirates from his home in Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland. He writes that he lived there for six years as an animal herder before escaping and returning to his family. After becoming a cleric, he returned to spread Christianity in northern and western Ireland. In later life, he served as a bishop, but little is known about where he worked. By the seventh century, he had already come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland.
Saint Patrick
His feast day is observed on 17 March, the supposed date of his death. It is celebrated in Ireland and among the Irish diaspora as a religious and cultural holiday. In the dioceses of Ireland, it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation.
OK, that’s it. This week, consider orgins unknown; how often in our lives do we follow and adhere to customs without context.
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 