Saint Patrick's Day or the Feast of Saint Patrick is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March every year, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.

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Edited by |Juls Mcmahon
Culture news section
17 March 2023 - New york

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     Let's celebrate and enjoy the feast of Saint Patrick, the world is on a date with the happiness and the traditions that surround all the countries of the world...let's share its secrets and originality.

Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early 17th century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland and celebrates the heritage and culture of the Irish in general. Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, céilithe, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks. Christians who belong to liturgical denominations also attend church services and historically the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol were lifted for the day, which has encouraged and propagated the holiday's tradition of alcohol consumption.

 

Saint Patrick's Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (for provincial government employees), and the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand, especially amongst the Irish diaspora. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival. Modern celebrations have been greatly influenced by those of the Irish diaspora, particularly those that developed in North America. However, there has been criticism of Saint Patrick's Day celebrations for having become too commercialized and for fostering negative stereotypes of the Irish people.

Saint Patrick was a fifth-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, the other patron saints being Brigid of Kildare and Columba. Patrick was never formally canonized, having lived before the current laws of the Catholic Church in these matters. Nevertheless, he is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, and in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is regarded as equal to the apostles and an Enlightener of Ireland.

The dates of Patrick's life cannot be fixed with certainty, but there is general agreement that he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the fifth century. A recent biography of Patrick shows a late fourth-century date for the saint is not impossible. According to the tradition dating from the early Middle Ages, Patrick was the first bishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland and is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland, converting a pagan society. He has been generally so regarded ever since, despite evidence of some earlier Christian presence.

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.

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.

Celebration and traditions

Today's Saint Patrick's Day celebrations have been greatly influenced by those that developed among the Irish diaspora, especially in North America. Until the late 20th century, Saint Patrick's Day was often a bigger celebration among the diaspora than it was in Ireland.

Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, Irish traditional music sessions, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.
There are also formal gatherings such as banquets and dances, although these were more common in the past. Saint Patrick's Day parades began in North America in the 18th century but did not spread to Ireland until the 20th century.
The participants generally include marching bands, the military, fire brigades, cultural organizations, charitable organizations, voluntary associations, youth groups, fraternities, and so on. However, over time, many of the parades have become more akin to a carnival.

 

Wearing green and shamrocks

On Saint Patrick's Day, it is customary to wear shamrocks, green clothing or green accessories. Saint Patrick is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish. This story first appears in writing in 1726, though it may be older. In pagan Ireland, three was a significant number and the Irish had many triple deities, which may have aided St Patrick in his evangelisation efforts.[Roger Homan writes, "We can perhaps see St Patrick drawing upon the visual concept of the triskele when he uses the shamrock to explain the Trinity".

Patricia Monaghan says there is no evidence the shamrock was sacred to the pagan Irish. Jack Santino speculates that it may have represented the regenerative powers of nature, and was recast in a Christian context‍—‌icons of St Patrick often depict the saint "with a cross in one hand and a sprig of shamrocks in the other".

The first association of the colour green with Ireland is from a legend in the 11th century Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of the Taking of Ireland).
It tells of Goídel Glas (Goídel the green), the eponymous ancestor of the Gaels and creator of the Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx). Goídel is bitten by a venomous snake but saved from death by Moses placing his staff on the snakebite, leaving him with a green mark. His descendants settled in Ireland, a land free of snakes. One of the first, Íth, visits Ireland after climbing the Tower of Hercules and being captivated by the sight of a beautiful green island in the distance.

The colour green was further associated with Ireland from the 1640s when the green harp flag was used by the Irish Catholic Confederation. Later, James Connolly described this flag as representing "the sacred emblem of Ireland's unconquered soul". Green ribbons and shamrocks have been worn on St Patrick's Day since at least the 1680s.

Since then, the colour green and its association with St Patrick's Day have grown.

The Friendly Brothers of St Patrick, an Irish fraternity founded in about 1750, adopted green as its colour.
The Order of St Patrick, an Anglo-Irish chivalric order founded in 1783, instead adopted blue as its colour, which led to blue being associated with St Patrick. In the 1790s, the colour green was adopted by the United Irishmen. This was a republican organisation—founded mostly by Protestants but with many Catholic members—who launched a rebellion in 1798 against British rule. Ireland was first called "the Emerald Isle" in "When Erin First Rose" (1795), a poem by a co-founder of the United Irishmen, William Drennan, which stresses the historical importance of green to the Irish.

The phrase "wearing of the green" comes from a song of the same name about United Irishmen being persecuted for wearing green. The flags of the 1916 Easter Rising featured green, such as the Starry Plough banner and the Proclamation Flag of the Irish Republic. When the Irish Free State was founded in 1922, the government ordered all post boxes be painted green, with the slogan "green paint for a green people"; in 1924, the government introduced a green Irish passport.

The wearing of the 'St Patrick's Day Cross' was also a popular custom in Ireland until the early 20th century. These were Celtic Christian cross made of paper that was "covered with silk or ribbon of different colours, and a bunch or rosette of green silk in the centre".