St. Patrick’s Day: March 17, 2010
St. Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in Ireland and it is a festival celebrated by people in the USA, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
St. Patrick’s Day is the annual feast day celebrated on the March 17 of every year. It is also known as Saint Paddy’s Day (colloquially) or simply the Paddy’s Day. The day celebrates St. Patrick (AD 385 – 461), who was one of Ireland’s patron saints during that period. For those people who celebrate the intended meaning of this day, Saint Patrick’s Day is the traditional day to achieve a spiritual renewal.
History of St. Patrick’s Day
Everything associated with St. Patrick’s Day is Irish: shamrocks, green and gold, and luck. But, why does the day gets celebrated on March 17?
The most popular theory holds that St. Patrick died on March 17, 493. As all saints typically have feast days associated with them, Catholics chose his date of death to honor him. St. Patrick’s Day got placed on the Catholic Church’s universal liturgical calendar due to the influence of Luke Wadding (a Franciscan scholar born in Waterford) during the early part of seventeenth century. However, it was celebrated from an earlier date in local Irish churches. It is considered a holy day for obligation of Ireland’s Roman Catholics.
No one is sure from where did the long-standing tradition to wear green or get pinched on Saint Patrick’s Day actually originated. There is a thought that it might have come from school children. Green is the apt color for this Irish holiday, as it is the one common in spring and shamrocks. It’s said that St. Patrick chose the green shamrock as a metaphor, demonstrating the holy trinity.
St. Patrick’s Day Traditions, Customs and Activities
Ever since it was considered a holiday in Ireland, there is a belief that with the spreading of the Irish people across the globe, they carried the history and celebration of the day along with them. Thus, celebrations in the U.K., U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Argentina are typical, though the day isn’t considered a public holiday.
Ireland remains the biggest observer of Saint Patrick’s Day, and it is considered a national holiday there. Almost all businesses (except pubs and restaurants) remain closed on March 17. With the day being a religious holiday, most Irish people attend a mass to offer prayers prior to the beginning of the serious celebrations.
Generally, the feast day falls in Lent. In case it falls on the Friday of Lent, obligation for abstaining from eating meat may get lifted by local bishops. Church calendars avoid the observance of the feast of saints during particular solemnities. They move the St. Patrick’s Day on a time beyond this period. There are very few cases of the day getting affected by such requirement. Thus, if the day falls in the Holy Week, it is celebrated on another date to avoid coinciding with Palm Sunday. In 1940, it was celebrated on April 3, whereas March 15 was the date of its occurrence in 2006. But there aren’t worries of this happening again any time soon; it’s not going to fall in a Holy Week again until 2160.
