Jody Victor: Tomorrow, March 17, 2009, is St. Patrick's Day. Millions of people will wear green, and celebrate the Irish in, and around, them with parades, good cheer, and perhaps a pint of green beer. But few of St. Patrick's Day revelers have a clue about St. Patrick the man.
The real St. Patrick wasn't even Irish. He was born in Britain around A.D. 390 to an aristocratic Christian family with a townhouse, a country villa, and plenty of slaves. At 16 he was kidnapped and sent to the mountainous countryside of Ireland to tend sheep as a slave. During this time he converted to Christianity. According to folklore, a voice came to Patrick in his dreams, telling him to escape. He found passage on a pirate ship back to Britain, where he was reunited with his family.
The voice then told him to go back to Ireland where he became a priest then a bishop to the Irish people. It wasn't until centuries later that he was honored as the patron saint of Ireland. After he died on March 17, 461, a mythology slowly grew up around him. Some of the myths include that he banished snakes from Ireland (no snakes ever existed on the island and don't to this day). The snake myth and others, such as Patrick using three-leafed shamrocks to explain the Holy trinity, were likely spread by well-meaning monks centuries after St. Patrick's death.
St. Patrick's Day was basically invented in America by Irish-Americans. Eighteenth-century Irish soldiers fighting with the British in the Revolutionary War held the first St. Patrick's Day parades. Some soldiers, for example, marched through New York City in 1762 to reconnect with their Irish roots. Other parades followed in the years and decades after, including well-known celebrations in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago, primarily for flourishing Irish immigrant communities. It became a way to honor the saint but also to confirm ethnic identity and to create bonds of solidarity.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!