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As legend has it, Saint Patrick of the holiday Saint Patrick’s Day was of Wales, born in AD 385. He took on work as an Ireland bishop ironically after spending the first sixteen years of his life as a pagan. It took being captured and sold as a slave by Irish marauders to cause him to create a relationship with God.
He lived as a slave for six years before he escaped to Gaul. Here, he dedicated twelve years of his life to the monastery of Saint Germain, the Auxerre bishop, that he had escaped to and he firmly believed at the close of his studies that he was meant to convert pagan believers in the direction of God. The young lad of The Saint Patrick’s Day tale soon would travel back to Ireland to convert others to Christianity.
Saint Patrick carried on in this manner, establishing monasteries, schools and churches in Ireland for thirty years before retiring to a place named County Down, where he died in 461 AD. There is a vast amount of folklore that has never been substantiated. Some believed he raised people of the dead while other stories claim he eradicated all of the snakes of Ireland with one sermon. Even with such a religious background, Saint Patrick’s Day has come to be a secular holiday.
The ever-famous icon held in the three-leafed-shamrock comes from an Irish legend where Saint Patrick used this object to describe Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as separate but connected entities. Believers gained a custom of wearing a shamrock on Saint Patrick’s day of feast.
America formally adopted this legend in 1737 when its people publicly celebrated the holiday in Boston. Today this ceremony includes the color of green to represent the shamrock, parades of celebration and the merry times of socializing with beer.
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