After all – and I hate to burst your little green bubble – St. Patrick wasn’t Irish.
No! Wait… What?
If folks could take a moment from pinching one another, guzzling green beer, searching for leprechauns or perhaps, more profitably, for pots of gold, they might be able to get down to the historical facts of the matter. So, now that you’ve taken the deep dive into your closet and found a green outfit for today, we can settle down to find out how the real story went down. We thrive on truth!
I like true stories, especially when I have a personal link to them. My mother loved keeping the family history and her side of the family is full of Irish, Scots and Brits. The more I learn about my fascinating ancestry, the more the British Isles move to the top of my list of places to visit. I don’t know about kissing that Blarney Stone, though. It looks mighty precarious and apparently some ancestor of mine must have kissed it long enough and hard enough to make it last because I’m already blessed with the gift of gab. My time in Ireland would be better spent trying to find and position the perfect headscarf in order to keep this mane of mine looking anything close to reasonable in that amount of wind. If all the hairdressers in Hollywood couldn’t keep Maureen O’Hara’s hairdo looking decent in all those movies, there’s little hope for me on a trip to Ireland!
Back to Patrick, now that I’ve taken the blarney detour. Let’s see, where were we?…
Oh, yes! Patrick wasn’t Irish at all. He was born in Roman Britain. His real name, according to my limited study on that point, was Maewyn Succat, which he wasn’t so fond of, so he called himself Patrick. Can’t say as I blame him. Imagine us all celebrating St. Maewyn’s Day. Nah!
He has nothing to do with leprechauns. Probably, if he ever encountered one, he would throw a few choice verses of Scripture at the vertically challenged little guy and it would go “poof” and disappear. He has nothing to do with pots of gold. People just associate that with leprechaun lore. I’m pretty sure that pinching people lay somewhere outside his personal boundaries, especially if it involved being so petty as to base it on the color of a person’s clothing. Leprechauns – now that’s another story. Should you encounter one, they are the ones who pinch you for not wearing green. The moral here is: Stick with Patrick. Avoid leprechauns.
I have no idea whether Patrick drank beer. He probably did, because he neither grew up nor spent his adult life in the land of teetotalism. I doubt that he bothered to color it green. Somehow, I think (and I’m pretty astute in these matters) this custom seems to be to be one of those that can be attributed to human nature. People who are looking for a great excuse to consume way too much of something will certainly latch on to any novel way to get the party started.
This brings us to snakes. Ireland is one of a handful of countries, including New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland and Antarctica, where snakes are not native in the wild. No snake with an ounce of sense would want to go to these places without a good, warm sweater and you’re probably less likely to meet up with that sight than you are a leprechaun. Saint Patrick had no need to drive snakes out of Ireland because there weren’t any. However, since the Scriptures refer to Satan as “the serpent”, the visual picture brought about by this mythical story is more than appropriate. Patrick, throughout his life, certainly dealt a blow to the wiles of the serpent.
Shamrocks? Yeah, you might want to pin one of those over your heart if you identify with the real Saint Patrick. Read on to discover why you might want to honor Saint Patrick on his special day.
I’ve heard it said that “the best revenge is a life well lived”. Joseph, after all his trials in Egypt, spoke these words to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20 NKJV). Jesus said, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, (Matthew 5:44 NIV).
Tough stuff, but Patrick, by faith in the One who saved him, was able to do it. What an example!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!