St. Patrick Wasn't Irish and Other Lesser-Known Facts About St. Patrick’s Day

The exact birthplace of St. Patrick is not known, but what is certain is that it wasn’t Ireland. He was born in what is now Great Britain, either England, Scotland, or Wales. According to his own autobiography, he was from Bannavem Taberniae, which might be Banwen in Neath Port Talbot in Wales. The village actually holds a service in St. Patrick honor every year.

The first time St. Patrick stepped foot in Ireland was when he was 16 and brought there as a slave. Irish raiders kidnapped him from his father’s home. He worked as a herdsman for six years. This is when he became religious. He turned to faith to keep him strong. St. Patrick later wrote that God spoke to him, telling him how to escape, and that is what he did.

St. Patrick was born Maewyn Succat (although some historians disagree) around 386 A.D. into a rich Roman family. His father was a deacon, and his grandfather, also a clergy member, served during the reign of Constantine the Great, first emperor to adhere to Christianity. But Maewyn was not religious at all. It’s believed that he took the name Patrick sometime during his religious journeys.

Imagine a holiday that is largely associated with drinking and no place to actually perform this sacred ritual. March 17 in Ireland has been celebrated as a religious feast day, marking the death of the nation’s patron saint. As a sign of respect, there was no drinking. Irish law banned pubs from opening on that day until the 1970s. Maeve Binchy, an Irish novelist, at that time called Dublin “the dullest place on Earth to spend St. Patrick’s Day.”

Usually the date on which a person is celebrated for his or her achievements or significant contributions to a country is his or her birthday, or the anniversary of another event to be celebrated. For example, Presidents’ Day is George Washington’s birthday. But this is not the case for the Feast of St. Patrick. March 17 is the day on which he died.

Converting the Irish to Christianity was not an easy task. Unlike the rest of Europe, people didn’t live in towns or very close to one another, and St. Patrick had to travel long distances. Borders between tribes were enforced, and he paid bribes to tribal leaders who would guarantee him safe passage.

Nowadays, when people think of Ireland and St. Patrick, they think of — other than a pint of Guinness — the color green. Historically, however, this is incorrect. The original color was blue. The color is actually still on Irish flags and armbands worn by the Irish Citizen Army, which rose up against British oppression in 1916 during the Easter Rising. The shift to green happened in the 19th century, when the clover became a national symbol. It’s said that some people had started wearing green even earlier than that.

The legend is that in the fifth century, St. Patrick forced all snakes out of Ireland into the sea and banished them from the country as he delivered a sermon on a mountaintop. But this story is a myth. There haven’t been any snakes on the Emerald Isle at least since the glacial period because cold-blooded reptiles can’t swim, and it would have been too cold for them to crawl on ice.

When you think of St. Patrick’s Day, you probably think of corned beef and cabbage. But this is not actually the case in Ireland. Cattle in Ireland was used for their strength to do farmwork and for their milk, not their meat. Cows were considered a sacred animal and a symbol of the rich. That’s why beef is not a traditional part of the Irish diet. What people today think is Irish corned beef is actually Jewish corned beef cooked in a pot with cabbage and potatoes.

If we are to consider the facts only, St. Patrick’s Day Parade is really more of an American event. The first parade took place in New York City in 1762. (The first celebration by Irish immigrant on American soil was held in 1737 in Boston.) Huge parades were beginning to be held and organized in the 19th century.

St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity and what it means to the pagan Irish. The three leaves symbolized the three people and the one stalk symbolized God. The shamrock is now the national flower of Ireland. In the 19th century, the flower became the symbol of the rebellion against the British rule.

St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S. started as a celebration by Irish immigrants of their origins. But as their numbers grew — especially after the Potato Famine in 1845 when more than a million Irish people fled to America to escape starvation — so did their political power. Irish people started to organize and became known as “the green machine.” They turned the annual parade, which was getting bigger and bigger, into a political opportunity. Candidates running for office became frequent attendees at the parades.

Finding a four-leaf clover is a sign of good luck, which is not as weird as some other superstitions, as only one in 10,000 people are likely to get that fortunate. And if you’re looking out for one, instead of examining all clovers individually, look at them collectively. If there is a four-leaf one, it’ll jump out.

St. Patrick’s Day has become a world holiday. Irish or not, people from all over the world flock to pubs to at least try a pint of Guinness. It may not come as a surprise that March 17 is a national holiday in Ireland, but did you know that it’s also a holiday in Montserrat, a British Caribbean dependency? In fact, people will have the Monday after the holiday off. Irish people lived there before enslaved Africans were brought to the Island the 17th century.

Irish people have a long history in Nigeria. It goes back more than a century, when Roger Casement, an Irish nationalist who sympathized with locals living under colonial rule, served as a British consular officer in southeastern Nigeria. When Ireland opened its embassy in Lagos in 1961, Irish bishops in Nigeria named St. Patrick as the country’s patron.

St. Patrick’s Day parade in Sydney, Australia, is among the largest such events in the world — certainly the largest in the southern hemisphere. More than 80,000 people gather to mark the occasion. The Australian parade is the only one outside Ireland that is sponsored, at least in part, by the Irish government.

The shortest St. Patrick’s day parade takes place in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. It’s just 98 feet long, which means the parade is over in just about 10 minutes, even if you walk slowly. There is also a footrace, which might be the shortest in the world as well — just 299 feet. And another record: The race ends at O’Kelley’s Pub, the biggest inflatable Irish pub in the world (but it’s not among the oldest bars in the country).

Americans spend about $250 million on beer on St. Patrick’s Day. A fifth of adults have a pint on March 17 every year. Worldwide, about 5.5 million pints of Guinness, one of the most popular beers in America, are consumed a day; on St. Patrick’s Day, however, that number more than doubles to 13 million.

St. Patrick was never actually canonized, which means that, technically, he is not a saint. He died long before a formal process of canonization was even created, which happened in the 12th century.

The first ever St. Patrick’s Day parade in Ireland took place in 1931, but the event didn’t make its way to neighboring Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, until fairly recently — 1998. And it happened in Belfast, a pro-British Protestant city. About 10,000 people marched. And while we are on the subject or marches, next read about women’s marches that have shaped America.