St. Patrick (née Maewyn Succat) was a 5th century Brit, abducted as a teenager as a forced laborer and trafficked as a swineherd to Ireland, where he got religion. He later escaped, went to France, and became a priest (at either Lérins Abbey or Auxerre) before returning to proselytize in Ireland. A millennium later, North America’s early Irish immigrants and their descendants began to celebrate the day of his death as a joyous holiday, which seems a wee bit ghoulish.
The party ramped up after the Potato Famine increased Irish immigration to the US in the mid 19th century. St. Patrick’s Day became a celebration of parades, corned beef and cabbage, fiddle music, soda bread, and green beer rather than the solemn saint’s day it had been in the Auld Sod, but that’s America for you. US tourists in Ireland expected a big bash on March 17th, and the host country was glad to oblige, in celebration of greenback dollars. The holiday has now gone global. Faith and begorrah!
A National Georgraphic video.
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