The person who got sidelined on St Patrick’s Day?
My tiny efforts to celebrate the feast included; wearing a green velvet dress, and matching green suede shoes with cream-coloured floral lace tights. Going to Westminster Cathedral where Archbishop Vincent Nichols celebrated Mass, and during Mass I sat by the St Patrick’s chapel in the cathedral and saw the candles flicker gold onto the green marbled shamrocks in the chapel.
Later, the queues for Irish pubs were a hundred metres long in Soho. It's good to celebrate, and have everyone pat you on the back for being Irish. But yesterday, I lost count of the amount of people who said to me ‘this is your day for getting drunk! You Irish just drink all day on Paddy's day.’ People from all around the world commented that they had studied 'the myths of St Patrick' in school.
From Ecuador to Italy to New York, many people in their twenties said that they had learnt the ‘legend’ about how St Patrick drove out the snakes in Ireland. St Patrick obviously has a firm place on school curricula all over the world. But if his life, mission, miracles and legacy are thought to be made-up fables, what use it is celebrating his feast day?
Maybe this individual got marginalised:
Great blog, Mary! Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteSo everyone says now that St. Patrick didn't really drive the snakes from Ireland? Why is it that there are no snakes there, then? Snakes are found on every continent and even on remote islands. Why not in Ireland? I'd be surprised if no one tried to introduce them as an experiment; but if so, they all died, being unable to survive there.
So my wife and I, neither of whom is Irish, headed out to Aiden's Pub in Bristol, Rhode Island, USA and had corned beef and cabbage and listened to the music. Love it! If you don't already, you should definitely take up the fiddle or pennywhistle or clairsarch or other instrument.
God bless from America!
Bud
I was very surprised to see that the NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade coverage on television did not downplay his mission and Catholicism. For a few moments, I thought I had tuned into EWTN, not the secular media!
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