Happy St. Patrick's Day!

As I sit down to write this blog article on St. Patrick’s day, I can’t help but feel that St. Patrick’s Day feels just like any other day.  However something does make this day special, there must be some reason that every year Chico State plans its spring break around this holiday.  There must be some reason that every member of my family (including my golden lab) is wearing at least one article of green clothing.  And this is what I hope to accomplish by the end of this blog article.

I am ashamed to admit that I do not know much about the history of St. Patrick’s Day.  Although I am partially of Irish heritage, and recently spent over a week in Ireland, all I remember learning about St. Patrick’s Day is to wear green and drink beer.  Because of my lack of knowledge regarding this subject, I decided to ask my family if they know the origins of this holiday.

When I asked my mom “Why St. Patrick roll around in his grave on March 17?”, she replied jokingly, “because he hates all those Americans trying to be Irish.”  I then talked to her if she knew the origins of the holiday, and she just replied that it was “an Irish thing.” 

I gave up on my mom’s knowledge of the subject, and turned to my brother, and I asked him the same questions.  He was able to tell me that St. Patrick died on March 17, but he was unable to tell me much more then that. 

After finally giving up on my family, I decided to turn to my quickest source of information, Wikipedia.  After reading about St. Patrick’s Holiday on wikipedia, I had gathered a lot of information about where the largest parades are found, what color to wear, what countries celebrate it, and what large bodies of water are dyed green, however I did not read anything about the origins of the holiday.  After some more scanning of the page, I was able to find that St. Patrick’s Day began as a religious holiday, and that’s about it. 

After Reading all of this history of people partying, I wish I could say I had something more exciting planned for today and tonight.  However tonight I will be Having a quiet dinner with the family, and probably working on more homework.  Maybe I will have a couple of beers in honor of my Irish Heritage, we will see.