St. Patrick’s Day: It’s Paddy, not Patty!
It has been maybe 10 and a half years since I last celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland and, traveling through this beautiful world, I have had this conversation too many times to count:
Someone: ‘Where are you from?’
Me: ‘Ireland’.
Someone: ‘Oh, you’re Irish! I also. ‘
I really? What part of Ireland are you from?
Someone: ‘Oh, I’ve never been to Ireland. My great-grandmother was Irish.
Me: ‘So where are you from in America?’
There is no day in the entire year that this conversation occurs other than March 17 … or the following Saturday if it falls on a weekday. There’s also all the gibberish about having to prove I’m Irish on occasion due to the fact that six years in England and four in Korea have made my accent a bit crooked. Also, living with a Canadian guy, I’ve picked up a bit of an accent … although he doesn’t say ‘aboot’ or ‘hey’ as much as I would have hoped.
Right now that I’m on the subject of words said differently, please Americans (and everyone else in the world who does) stop calling it St. Patrick’s Day. It’s St. Patrick’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, or just Father’s Day. Under NO circumstances should it be called St. Patrick’s Day.
Always.
Absolutely.
Rice paddy: Short for Patrick.
Patty: Short for Patricia, the name of Marge’s sister in The Simpsons and the name of a small, round portion of meat usually found in a hamburger. It can be used to cover everything from the questionable things that go on a McDonald’s cheeseburger to the homemade gourmet things my boyfriend makes.
If you don’t believe me, go to Ireland, call a friend ‘Patty’ and see what happens, I challenge you. Worth knowing, Ireland’s health care costs are astronomical, so you may want to pick a guy that you have a fighting chance with.
Forward. Now, not much is known about St. Paddy himself. What is known is that he was not Irish. Absolutely. Not a bit. He is British.
Just to recap our geography, before someone writes and says, ‘it’s the saaaaame’, Great Britain = England, Scotland and Wales. No Ireland.
St. Patrick, presumably when he was just Patrick (or Paddy to his friends), at sixteen he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland to work as a shepherd. I’m not kidding, we snatch it up and grab it properly.Later We detained him for 6 years until he escaped and fled with his family in Great Britain.
The story tells, as do the stories, that while he was alone and apart from other people working in the mountains of Ireland, God spoke to him. God told him that he would soon be free and that it was time to leave Ireland. Upon his return to his homeland, he entered the church where he stayed for 15 years (roughly, who really knows) and then returned to Ireland. Seriously, he went back to the people who kidnapped him in the first place.
Now widely (blamed?) Credited for bringing Christianity to our little island (was it really necessary?), We celebrate St. Patrick’s death in the form of drinking, parades with floats, green beer, dyeing our rivers green (with orange dye no less) and with silly hats.
Do you think this is what he had in mind when he brought us religion? Floats and alcohol? It can only be expected!
So where does shamrock come in in all of this, I hear you ask yourself.
Well Saint Patrick used the shamrock (a three leaf clover, NOT four, three … THREE) to explain the Holy Trinity to the people of Ireland and we naturally adopted it as our national flower.
Ah, tell me about the snakes.
Apparently Saint Patrick, in his spare time between praying, talking to God, explaining the Holy Trinity to people and spreading the Christian word, also got rid of all the snakes in Ireland. Each one of them. There are no more snakes in Ireland. And because? Because St. Paddy got rid of everyone. True story. Probably. Again, who really knows?
And the goblins?
They don’t fit into this story, so we’ll have to deal with them some other time.