So this is a little bit of a different post for SomewhatNerdy, but since it’s St. Patrick’s Day, I figured a little Nerd history would be a good fit for it. So crack a beer, toast the Irish, and read about the strange history behind St. Patrick’s Day!
We all love St. Patrick’s Day, well any excuse to drink right? It’s a fun holiday celebrating Irish heritage and where everything is green, the clothes, the decorations, the beer, the shits you get after the green beer…But what do we really know about St. Patrick? I mean, he must’ve been a really cool Saint who partied hard on the blood of Christ. He was Irish after all.
Patrick…You’re partied out again!
Wait…No he wasn’t. He wasn’t Irish, but I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s just the foam on this beer of truth.
Let’s start with the “Two Patrick” theory most historians believe. Meaning, the church heroics of St. Patrick are suspected to be a combination of things done by Palladius and Patrick. Considering these two lived so long ago and there are very few written accounts and even fewer that were dated, historians surmise this theory is super true based on science and written clues that each holy dude faced in their respective times. They were active in Ireland about 50 years apart, give or take and each one had things credited to St. Patrick. So St. Patrick is like Voltron, fusing each individual together making a super robot priest made of metal lions. Damn, that would be cool.
The actual Patrick wrote two letters to make people think “hey this is the dude that cleansed the Emerald Isle of snakes” (also not true. Snakes never lived on Ireland…ever. Cloaked human sacrificing pagans, sure, but no snakes.) In the first letter he states that at a very young age he was captured from Northern England and brought to Ireland as a slave. He escaped and made it back to England where he went into the clergy like his father before him and his before him…seriously. I’m not sure if it was the celibate Catholic clergy or one of those that are lenient on horizontal happy dancing, but they were in some sort of church. After his death (which is March 17th. That’s St. Patirck’s Day for those of you keeping track at home) he was proclaimed a Saint and the patron saint of Ireland, beer fueled ginger fights, and potato eating. I can’t confirm the last two for sure, but I bet those are real things. However, his sainthood was never actually fully canonized by the Pope. So he’s not an official, official saint according to Catholic doctrine.
And then on top of the shit storm that is St. Patrick’s muddy background, there is no official account where his body is laid to rest. My theory is, he actually was a leprechaun and went back to the end of the rainbow where he hangs out with Lisa Frank and people who love Skittles.
“I’m so wasted. I hope this tiny church is filled with cookies.” ~St. Patrick (Probably)
