By Gary Bennett
Useless Facts to Impress your Friends and Bar Mates
This article appears in the March 17, 2022, edition of the Frederick News-Post
This most fun of American holidays features the wearing of the green, lots of drinking and kissing, and plenty of parades and orchestrated hijinks. But I’m here to help you impress your friends and sketchy bar acquaintances with the following useless, but interesting, knowledge.
Hard as it is to believe now, St. Patrick’s Day was a dry holiday for most of the 20th century. St. Patrick’s Day is considered a religious holiday in Ireland, meaning the nation’s pubs are closed for business on 3/17. (This is not quiiiiiiiiite the way it is in the U.S.) The one exception to closing bars in Ireland was to allow beer vendors to sell their wares at the big national dog show, which is always held on St. Patrick’s Day for some odd reason.
New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is one of the world’s largest. Since 1762, 250,000 marchers have paraded up and down Fifth Avenue on foot. Much like the PGA, the parade doesn’t allow floats or cars. Not to be outdone, Chicago has been celebrating St. Patrick’s Day by dumping 40 tons of green dye into the Chicago River since 1962.
Since we’re all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, you’ll want to know some of the lingo. Besides “faith and begorrah,” which I cleverly worked into the title and roughly means “by golly,” the other phrase you’ll need is “Erin go Bragh,” which means roughly “Ireland Forever.” This one comes in handy when rooting on your favorite soccer hooligans or claiming you are actually Irish. I’m sorry to report that “kiss me, I’m Irish” is purely American.
Even though we’re all Irish now on his special day, you might not know that St. Patrick himself wasn’t Irish. He was born to Roman parents in Scotland or Wales in the 4th century. And perhaps St. Maewyn’s Day would be a better name for his holiday. According to Irish legend, St. Patrick’s birth name was Maewyn Succat, but he changed it to Patricius after becoming a priest. Excellent move!
The shamrock became associated with St. Patrick when he used the three-leafed plant as a metaphor for the Holy Trinity when introducing Christianity to Ireland. The other marshmallow symbols you’ll find in your Lucky Charms cereal bowl are purely American, and rightfully so!
It wouldn’t be St. Patrick’s Day without leprechauns, now would it? But did you know they are all men? In traditional Irish folk tales, there are no female leprechauns, only nattily attired wee males. This begs the question, how do we get new baby leprechauns?
And make no mistake—they earned that gold they’re guarding. According to legend, leprechauns spend their days making and mending shoes. It’s hard work, so you can’t blame them for being territorial about their pots of gold.
In Irish lore, St. Patrick is credited with driving all the snakes out of Ireland. But modern scientists suggest that the job might not have been too hard—Ireland has never been home to any snakes. Through the Ice Age, Ireland was too cold to host any reptiles and the surrounding seas have staved off serpentine invaders ever since. Modern scholars think the “snakes” St. Patrick drove away likely represented the Druids or possibly Mitch McConnel and Chuck Schumer.
If being an historically dry holiday is not bad enough, I’m sorry to report that, traditionally, there is no corned beef in corned beef and cabbage, that most Irish of St. Patrick’s Day snacks. Oh no, it has nothing to do with grain corn. Instead, it’s a nod to the large grains of salt that were historically used to cure meats, which were known as “corns.”
Now you know. Please enjoy St. Patrick’s Day responsibly.