St. Patrick’s Day is all about Catholicism’s arrival in Ireland. It changed the culture and heritage of Ireland. What was once celebrated as the beginning of Ostara, with nature’s rebirth from winter and night and day being of equal time, was erased by the Catholics as they used a false story to remake the day into a Catholic celebration.
The reality is that the man who brought Catholicism to Ireland was not named Patrick (his name was Palladus, married, with children). There were no snakes in Ireland for him to get rid of, and neither ever mentioned shamrocks. Thee was a Patrick/Paddy/Pat who was a Saint but he was not Irish nor was he from that time period. St. Patrick actually was the cause of almost 800 Druids.
St Patrick’s Day is celebrated during the Lent season. Meat was once prohibited but now they can have bacon. It started circa 9th or 10th Century and is held on a Roman Feast Day. There was a potato famine in Ireland due to a blight on the plants. Immigrants soon brought the tradition to the Americas and in 1848 a great parade began to be held. In 1962 Chicago began dying the Chicago River green because there had been a movement to find out how city pollution was illegally being dumped into the river and they used green dye. Today, only 40 pounds of vegetable dye is used and the river is only green for a few hours.
Ok, so The Leprechaun… this comes from the Celtic belief in fairies. But was moved into a story about a small-bodied person, grumpy, too, that mended other fairies shoes. They were said to be full of tricks, one of them being that there they hide their pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
It is good to question all things. Celebrating heritage is one thing, but creating a total myth around it that holds no substance as far as being an ancient myth, is another.
Celebrate with the wearing of green, honor your heritage if you are Irish ancestry, and make traditional Irish meals (New England Boiled Dinner and soda bread is one carried over to Maine and is still made to this day.) Keep it real.
©Carol Desjarlais 3.17.23
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