by Gemma Wiseman

Created on: March 09, 2009   Last Updated: August 10, 2009

For over a thousand years, the Irish have celebrated St. Patrick's Day as a religious holiday. The Irish honor their patron saint, St. Patrick, who, it is claimed, converted most of the Irish population to Christianity by the mid 5th century A.D. That is the essence of the traditional legend. But in fact St. Patrick's Day has three origins. It also experienced a rebirth and a reinvention.

Old traditions say that St. Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17 to mark the death in circa A.D.461 of a great religious man and humanitarian. But St. Patrick's story is riddled with mystery.

Some claim he was born into a wealthy family living in Wales or maybe Scotland. His parents were actually from Rome and living in Britain. At the age of 15 or 16, he was captured by an Irish chieftain and taken to Ireland as a slave. It was then he converted to Christianity, finally escaped home to his family and then became a priest. (During his studies for priesthood, he changed his name from Maewyn to Patrick.)

Pope Clemens commissioned Patrick to preach in Ireland. But Patrick was more than a preacher. He was a living legend who, for 30 years, seemed to inspire hope and create miracles. Legends say he even drove snakes from Ireland, but snakes were often associated with pagan beliefs, so perhaps the snake legend was a metaphor representing the ousting of paganism in Ireland. But more important, St. Patrick seemed to unite the Irish people.

From the mid 18th to the mid 19th centuries, St. Patrick's Day experienced a rebirth in America. On March 17, 1762, the first St. Patrick's Day parade took place in New York City, a hub of Irish immigrants. Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched on this day. In the 19th century, Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine of 1845-1849 celebrated St. Patrick's Day by eating corned beef and cabbage, items not usually on the menu for poor peasants. St. Patrick's Day was reborn with Irish-American traditions. And St. Patrick's Day was slowly shifting from a purely religious festival to a more secular one.

In the 20th century, St. Patrick's Day underwent two stages of reinvention. In 1903 St. Patrick's Day became a public holiday in Ireland, and the first St. Patrick's Day parade was held in the Irish Free State was in Dublin in 1931. (This was almost 200 years after the American version!) St. Patrick's Day was now officially a secular celebration. In the mid 1990s, the second stage unfolded. It was decided that St. Patrick's Day was an opportunity to showcase Ireland's culture to the world. The Irish government set up a steering group. The first festival was held on March 17, 1996. By 2006 the festival lasted five days.

Worldwide, the public seems to have embraced the opportunity to enjoy an Irish experience on St. Patrick's Day.

Ultimately the St. Patrick's Day celebrated in the 21st century has both religious and secular origins, but the original version, linked with the story of St. Patrick, lends a special, magical Irish mystique to the day.

Bibliography
Black Dog's St Patrick's Day History and Legends http://blackdog4kids.com/holiday/pat/history.html
St Patrick's Day http://stpatricksday.com/history/stpatricksday/hist- ireland1.shtml
Saint Patrick's Day in Ireland http://stpatricksday.com/history/stpatricksday/hist- ireland1.shtml

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