St. Patrick’s Day: It’s Paddy, Not Patty!

It’s been maybe 10 and a half years since I last celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland, and as I’ve traveled this beautiful world, I’ve 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 actually been to Ireland. My great-grandmother was Irish.

Me: ‘So where are you from in America?’

There is no day in the whole year that this conversation happens more than March 17… or the following Saturday if it falls on a weekday. There’s also all the gibberish of having to prove I’m Irish on occasion due to the fact that six years in England and four in Korea has led to my accent being 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 ‘ey’ as much as I would have hoped.

While I’m on the subject of words being 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. Paddy’s Day, or just Paddy’s Day. Under NO circumstances should it be called St. Patrick’s Day.

Ever.

Absolutely.

Rice paddy: Short for Patrick.

Patty: Short for Patricia, the name of Marge’s sister on The Simpsons and the name of a small, round piece of meat usually found in a hamburger. It can be used to cover everything from the iffy stuff that goes on a McDonald’s cheeseburger to the gourmet homemade tidbits my boyfriend makes.

If you don’t believe me, go to Ireland, call a guy ‘Patty’ and see what happens, I dare you. Worth knowing, Ireland’s healthcare costs are astronomical, so you might want to pick a guy you stand 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 same thing’, Great Britain = England, Scotland and Wales. Do not Ireland.

St. Patrick, presumably when he was just Patrick (or Paddy to his friends), at sixteen was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland to work as a shepherd. He wasn’t kidding, we kidnapped him and caught him properly.So we kept him for 6 years until he escaped and fled with his family in Britain.

The story goes, as the stories do, that while he was alone and isolated 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 (approx, who knows) and then returned to Ireland. Seriously, he went back to the people who kidnapped him in the first place.

Now largely (guilty?) of the credit for bringing Christianity to our little island (was it really necessary?), we celebrate St. Patrick’s death by drinking, parading with floats, green beer, dyeing our rivers green (with orange dye anything less) and wear 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 the clover come into all this, I hear you ask.

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 naturally we adopted it as our national flower.

Oh, 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 all of them. True story. Probably. Again, who really knows?

And what about the elves?

They don’t fit into this story, so we’ll have to deal with them another time.

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