As if my name didn’t give it away already, I am of Irish heritage. I am 3/4 Irish and was been raised with a strong sense of Irish pride and culture. So as it’s St. Patrick’s Day today, I feel obligated to inform the public about what St. Patrick’s Day actually means and dispel some Irish rumors and phrase that typically get mixed up. 

So who was St. Patrick? 

The reality is that nobody really knows. There are several accounts about who he was and how he came to Ireland. Two authentic letters about his life are in existence, one of which documents that he was born in Britain and then captured and sold into slavery. After he escaped, he joined the Church and returned to Ireland. 

In the beginning, St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated purely as a religious holiday, but is now celebrated outside of Ireland, namely in the U.S.

Oh yeah and that whole chasing the snakes out of Ireland has one fatal flaw: there weren’t any snakes to begin with. 

Why do you wear green?

One of the most popular stories about St. Patrick is that he used the three leafed shamrock to teach the Irish pagens about the Holy Trinity. But in the beginning, people actually wore blue on St. Patrick’s Day and green was considered unlucky. Green is said to be the favorite color of the Good People aka fairies, and they liked to steal children who wore the color too much. Wearing green is most likely an American tradition.

There is also a myth that wearing green makes you invisible to leprechauns, who would pinch anyone they could see. 

Speaking of Leprechauns…        

Despite what St. Patrick’s Day decorations and children’s books like to tell you, leprechauns are not cute, pot of gold guarding men. They are drunk, grumpy, mean little creepers. They make shoes for fairies and play pretty nasty tricks on humans, not sell cereal and dance a jig. 

“You won? Oh it must be the Luck of the Irish!”

Ok seriously? What sort of luck brings 1,000 of years of invasion, colonization, exploitation, starvation and mass emigration? And when we moved to THIS country to try and have a better life, we were treated as 4th class citizens (behind the rich, the middle class and African-Americans) until the Gold Rush. 

The term “Luck of the Irish” came when some of the most successful and prosperous miner were Irish or Irish American. Unfortunately, this still carries negative connotations, because it basically says we got rich on pure luck and not on brains or talent. 

And for the love of St. Patrick stop trying to shove corned beef down my throat

Yes, the Irish did have cows, but beef was used almost exclusively as an export because it was expensive. So no corned beef in Ireland. However, poor immigrants began eating the stuff in Lower East Side New York, a meal they borrowed from their JEWISH neighbors. 

So as you recover from your green beer hang over and cringe at the video of you singing “Danny Boy” tomorrow, remember Erin Go Braugh, my friends.