Saint Patrick – Thanks For The Memories

So, every year we get inundated with Irish stuff on March 17th. Guinness sales spike. All of a sudden everyone is having corned beef for dinner and wearing green. I only discovered my Irish heritage a couple of years ago from a DNA test, but I’ve had strong feelings about Saint Patrick for decades. I’m one of those folk who believed the tales of Patrick driving the snakes, a.k.a. Pagans, out of Ireland.

I’m sure you’ve heard all about it at this point. The story of Saint Patrick tells a tale on one brave missionary who single handedly eradicated Ireland of snakes. Yay Patrick! Of course, there were no snakes on the Emerald Isle during this time and so the story goes, that the snakes were actually Pagan folks or Druids. This conclusion was drawn because no literal snakes were in Ireland, but the Druids would tattoo serpents on their arms; therefore, snakes equal Pagan.

I believed this story long before the Internet made it famous, so don’t start thinking that silly Facebook memes had any influence, they didn’t. But over time I read stories and tales with a different focus. Perhaps Saint Patrick had nothing to do with the ending of the Druids, or Paganism, in Ireland. Perhaps those stories are just zealous Pagan falsehoods. Just clever ways to increase distrust of Christianity.

It seems the stories I believed are not historically accurate, they are just not true. Poor Saint Patrick, being blamed all these years for crimes against the Druids that he did not commit.

However, at this point in my life, I’ve decided that it doesn’t really matter if it’s literally true or not, because the bottom line is that Patrick went to Ireland to convert folks and as we all know conversion wasn’t done with flowers, smiles, and happy conversations. It was done with force, lies, and violence. Patrick has had events attributed to him that are false, or added to his roster of achievements decades later, but again, does that matter?

And I say this as an American, where we use this “holiday” to celebrate binge drinking and dyeing everything green. This isn’t done out of respect for a holy man, it’s just another excuse to embarrass ourselves in front of the world.

Some Pagans have taken on this date as a statement of resistance, a time to step out and proclaim that the forces of assimilation and conversion are not okay with us. Religion cannot be used against us. We will be seen. We will be heard, and to hell with Saint Patrick. And that feels more important than anything one man might have done a long time ago in a land far away.