Happy St. Patrick's Day

I was listening to the morning drive DJ, and he asked if anyone knew which country was the first to throw a St. Patrick's Day parade.

"The United States," I said, to no one in particular.

After the commercial break, the DJ came back on the air and said, "The United States."

I patted myself on the back, because it was purely a guess. Still, it didn't come as any surprise. Nationalism is not as old as St. Patrick (he lived and died sometime in the 5th Century...we think), so it's rare to find "national Saint parades" dating back more than a century or two.

Patrick didn't consider himself Irish. He was Roman-British, and his first trip to Ireland wasn't auspicious. He was kidnapped by Irish pirates and spent 6 years as a captive. He later escaped, only to return as a missionary, trying to spread the word of Christ. When he died is anybody's guess, and March 17 is purely a symbolic date.

The holidays and feast days that we celebrate are historically impossible to nail down. In Paddy's time, they were using a completely different calendar than we have now, and Patrick himself probably would have been surprised to find out that he would become the symbol of the country. For one thing, there were no "countries" when Patrick walked the earth. It wasn't until three hundred years after his death that he became the patron saint of Guinness-land, and no one's even sure which church he belonged to.

What does this all mean?

Not a hell of lot. If you have to be saint, being St. Patrick is a pretty good deal. People say your name, raise a glass of beer in your honor, and get blind drunk singing your praises. That's as good a legacy as any. When you get down to it, a saint that crosses the secular/religious divide is rare, not unlike country singers that successfully make the jump to rock n' roll.

Off the top of my head, only St. Valentine and St. Patrick get their own cross-cultural party day, and it doesn't come with any anti-Christian baggage, either. Say Merry Christmas to somebody and they can get all hot and bothered about the separation of church and state. Say, "Happy St. Patrick's Day," and that person will buy you another beer and say, "Kiss me, I'm Irish!" even if they're not.

Irish people must feel very vindicated by St. Patrick's Day. On March 17th, guys named Jablonski will lie and say they have a little Irish in them. Back when the Irish first came to the New World, they were considered the lowest of the low. There was no other nationality you could be that wasn't worse than being Irish. Now, people are proud to wear funny green top hats, drink green beer, and puke same, all in the name of being from the land of shamrocks.

Sounds good to me. Happy St. Patrick's Day.