Well, a belated happy St. Patrick's day!
As a child, in school, every St Patrick's, we would dutifully make our shamrock in art class and have green decorations in the classroom. We were probably told an Irish story or maybe a bit about St. Patrick. Somehow, the excitement of St. Patrick's day never got to us. It didn't have any relevance for kids who lived out in the boonies and rarely got out of their local district.
St. Patrick has a long history. It is thought he brought Christianity to Ireland in the 5 th century and for a bonus he scared all the snakes out of Ireland. So St. Patrick is well known in Irish religious and cultural history.
St. Patrick's celebration spread to many parts of the world as the Irish were great travellers.
St. Patrick's day celebrations, as we know them today, were largely started in America. Some of the enthusiasm for parades went back to Ireland and now they have the best parades. So again religion and culture are celebrated. The Irish are inclusive as they keep saying everybody has a little Irish in them. So many people who are not Irish get caught up in St. Patrick's day celebrations.
Much of Europe had similar celebrations for St. Patrick and his bringing of Christianity.
A few bloggers posted on St. Patrick's Day.
Now there are many other patron Saints. I'm not up on all the saints.
One very interesting saint is St. Urho. He comes across as being the real McCoy but was a actually the creation of a Minnesotan in the 60's. He borrowed liberally from the St. Patrick story and invented a saint for the Finnish people of Minnesota. A tradition has been built up around St Urho and Minnesotans of Finnish backgrounds have wacky parades and parties. St. Urho day was originally celebrated in the summer. Today it is celebrated on March 16! St. Urho has now spread to Finland.
Only one blog I follow posted on St. Urho's day.
Now at age 77 I have never seen a st. Patrick's Day parade. We still don't have St. Patrick's day parades where I live.
Am I missing something?
