A Brief History of St. Patrick's Day

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).

He managed to find passage on a boat, return home, and eventually settle in France in the Tours region, where local lore has Maewyn the nephew of St. Martin of Tours, and has him serving 20 years as a monk at Marmoutier Abbey. An angel visited Maewyn again while in the monastery, this time telling him to go back to Ireland. Once ordained he was given the name Patricius. The pope (in addition to the angel) may have sent Patricius to Ireland (Cronin and Adair, 2002).

Other priests were already established on the island according to Patricius's "Letter to Coroticus" (Cronin and Adair, 2002). St. Patrick can't be credited with being only person to bring Christianity to Ireland, but perhaps as the most successful, a testament to his success being the numerous monasteries in Ireland that maintained operation and academics even throughout the Middle Ages. What began as a local cult in the town where he died turned into a national celebration and a country's patron saint. Confession and his "Letter to Coroticus" are "the basis for all we know of the historical Patrick" (McSorley, 1997). The rest is legend.

"Confessio, biographers have invested him with an imposing and presence and mythical powers-the St. Patrick of 'legend.' Hagiographers, who specialize in writing about saints' lives, have gone beyond Patrick the Christian who learned to speak Gaelic and converted many natives, to invent Patrick the ancient superhero-replete with Christ's staff and the ability to perform miracles" (Cronin and Adair, 2002, p. xxvii). Legend has Patricius "able to put curses on enemies, turn men into animals, and purge rivers of fish" (p. xxviii).

St. Patrick's Day

As previously noted, St. Patrick's Day became a Christian feast day in 1631. What it has evolved to today is far from a religious observance. Today's incarnation has more to do with Irish pride than with a saint's life. Parades, meals, and parties all define today's St. Patrick's celebration. Though Christian feast days are celebrations, like St. Valentine's Day, the holiday has taken on a life of its own. St. Patrick, though he was not Irish, became a symbol of Irish pride, and thus his day has become a celebration of Irish heritage.

St. Patrick became a much bigger deal after English invasions of Ireland (first in 1171 and more seriously in 1536; Cremin, 2007), and especially after the British Act of Union was declared in 1800. His day became a way to celebrate Irish culture. Thanks to St. Patrick, or at least to another story attributed to him, the shamrock became a symbol of Irish pride and was adorned to show displeasure with English rule (History Channel, 2007). It is said that St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the holy trinity to the Irish. Whether or not this is true doesn't really matter; the shamrock lives on today. This nationalism is most likely why St. Patrick has his place in society today, more so than the historical St. Patrick (BBC, 2000).

St. Patrick's Day Celebrations

According to Cronin and Adair (2002), St. Patrick's Day was observed in Ireland in the late 1700s by grand balls held at Dublin Castle. These balls were attended by Protestant Irish, whose St. Patrick's Day celebrations tended to be more formal. Irish Catholics on the other hand were mostly working class, and their celebrations were especially not formal.

The first St. Patrick's Day parade however did not take place in Ireland but in New York City. Cronin and Adair (2002) have the date of this first parade as 1766, and the History Channel (2007) lists the year as 1762. Wearing of the Green marks that the "first recorded Patrician festivities [in North America] took place 17 March, 1762, in the house of John Marshall, Irish Protestant" (p. 10), who lived in New York. Important to note in the quote is that John Marshall was Protestant. North America's first Irish immigrants were wealthy Protestants who were also proud of their Irish heritage. Many Irish charitable organizations of the time were founded by Irish Protestants. Like the Protestants in Ireland, those in North America held more formal St. Patrick's Day celebrations. The first parade was that of Irish-American soldiers marching.

After the Great Famine (1845-1849) in Ireland, American St. Patrick's Day celebrations changed (Moss, 1995). The potato blight drove many out of Ireland. Many Irish emigrated to England, Canada, and the United States. Emigrants departures were treated as wakes since those staying and those leaving knew they would likely never see one another again. The large Irish immigrant communities that developed considered St. Patrick's Day a way to celebrate a "resurrection after the wake" (Cronin and Adair, 2002, p. 16). Particularly in the United States, where the Irish Catholic immigrants weren't exactly welcome in the mid-1800s, these downtrodden immigrants realized their strength in numbers during St. Patrick's Day celebrations, and realized their possible political power.

Irish pride took on a whole new life outside of Ireland. Celebrations as we know them today are of North American origin. According to the History Channel, the rambunctious festivities were not common in Ireland until recently, stating that up until the 1970s "Irish laws mandated that all pubs be closed on March 17." In 1995 Ireland embraced the day as a tourism opportunity, and Dublin once again hosts a grand party (though far different from its parties in the eighteenth century).

This March the Irish and the non-Irish will celebrate St. Patrick's Day, with green beer, green shirts, and grand parades. Now you know why.

C. Austin, "St. Patrick, the Man and the Myth," Grand Valley State University, Michigan.

BBC, "St. Patrick's Day," March 2, 2000.

Biography.com, "Who was St. Patrick?"

Donnchadh Cremin, "Clannada na Gadelica."
Michael Cronin and Daryl Adair, The Wearing of the Green: The History of Saint Patrick's Day. New York: Routledge, 2002.

The History Channel, "St. Patrick's Day History."

Anita McSorley, "The St. Patrick You Never Knew," St. Anthony Messenger, AmericanCatholic.org.

Kenneth Moss, "St. Patrick's Day Celebrations and the Formation of Irish-American Identity, 1845-1875," Journal of Social History, Volume 29, 1995.