The perfect holiday for wannabes

MICHELE MARR

“God is good, but never dance in a small boat.”

-- IRISH PROVERB

Two decades ago about this time of year, in my then-home in

Southern Germany, I was enjoying lunch with a dozen or so members of

the Officers’ and Civilians’ Wives Club at the seventh Army Training

Center in Vilseck, Germany.

We shared broccoli quiche that would’ve made Dr. Seuss proud, with

its dyed-green crust and egg filling, complemented with green salad

and Irish soda bread, also green.

I don’t remember who suggested the all-green potluck, but if any

one of us thought it seemed gross at the time, we kept the peace and

didn’t speak.

The table was set with shamrock-green plates, paper napkins and

goblets of lime-green mineral water. For dessert, we cut into a white

cake, dyed pastel green, and robed in grass green butter cream served

with coffee, which, if you didn’t drink it black, was accompanied by

green sugar and milk.

St. Patrick’s Day is so woven into the fabric of life in the

United States, we were celebrating it thousands of miles from home

and not a one of us was Irish.

But then neither was Patrick, the patron saint of the Emerald

Isle. And it’s said that on his name day, “everyone is Irish.”

Here in the United States -- where St. Patrick’s Day has long been

associated with the color green, shamrocks, leprechauns, pots of

gold, beer (often dyed green), corned beef and cabbage, piping and

fiddling music, dance and large parades -- I know people (some

year-round Irish, some not) who travel each year to New York, New

Orleans or Boston to party.

It was in Boston, in 1737, in what would later become the United

States, that St. Patrick’s Day was first commemorated with a parade.

Now New York City, where a St. Patrick’s Day parade was first held in

1766, claims to hold the largest modern-day parade.

In Ireland, since his death in the late fifth century until very

recent years, the feast of St. Patrick’s falling asleep was first and

foremost a religious holiday, marked mainly with church services,

vigils and prayers.

During the last decade, though, celebrations in Dublin have grown

into a weeklong festival, which this year begins today and ends on

March 17. The government of Ireland inaugurated the largely cultural

fest to compete with celebrations worldwide and to spotlight the

talents, skills and achievements of the Irish people.

The week’s program of events includes various visual arts, music,

street theater, fireworks, a parade, a flotilla and a treasure hunt,

with a map that leads participants through a unique historical and

cultural tour of the city on the way to treasure.

Like so many St. Patrick’s Day events, the only thing St. Patrick

seems to bring to Dublin’s festival is his good name and perhaps, as

Ireland’s patron saint, his patronage.

The festival draws close to 1 1/2 million people and is worth

nearly 80 million Irish pounds to the country’s economy.

Otherwise, St. Patrick’s presence seems to be confined to a

“History of St. Patrick” page on the festival’s website

(https://www.stpatricksday.ie), which offers a brief biography of the

saint, separating folklore and legend from recorded history.

What little is known about St. Patrick comes from his own

“Confession” and one other surviving document, his “Letter to

Coroticus,” an Irish warlord.

According to his “Confession,” Patrick was born in a now unknown

place called Bannavem Taberniae somewhere in Roman Britain. His

father, whose name was Calpurnius, was a deacon and the son of a

priest.

Patrick, however, didn’t embrace the Christian faith of his father

and grandfather until he was 16, when marauders took him captive and

sold him into slavery in Ireland.

He later wrote about that time, which he spent working as a

shepherd: “There the Lord opened the sense of my unbelief that I

might at last remember my sins and be converted with all my heart to

the Lord my God.”

Prompted by an angel who appeared to him in a dream, Patrick

escaped his captors after several years. He settled in France and

spent 20 years as a monk in Marmoutier Abbey until he returned to

Britain, where another vision urged him to go back to Ireland, this

time as a missionary.

Shortly afterward, Pope Celestine called Patrick to be a bishop

and sent him, along with 24 followers, to Ireland for his ministry.

There, Patrick traveled and taught until his death, converting

throngs of Irish pagans to the Christian faith.

He was venerated locally as a saint centuries before the Vatican

began its practice of canonization. An early salutation, “May God,

Mary and Patrick bless you,” is still common in Ireland today.

Patrick likely never ran snakes out of Ireland. It’s now thought

that the Emerald Isle never had snakes and that the legend began with

the use of the snake as a symbol for pagans.

Tales of Patrick making use of a shamrock to explain the concept

of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, may be only enduring

folklore. But, if in folklore more than fact, St. Patrick has in

death, as in his life, persevered.

Locally, here in Huntington Beach, Irish and Irish wannabes will

hail the saint with Irish gusto, good music, dancing and good beer,

on March 17 at Gallaghers, just off Main Street Downtown.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].