Tomorrow (or, um, today I guess, what with it being past midnight) is St. Patrick's Day. It is the thing that every non-Irish person knows about Ireland, aside from leprechauns, maybe. There are parades. There is green beer. There are shamrocks. There are droves of people wearing funny hats. Only some of these things have to do with St. Patrick himself.
A little background: St. Patrick was (presumably) born in Britain near the end of the 4th Century A.D. (maybe). He was (so the story goes) captured by Irish marauders and taken to Ireland, but (as the legend goes) he escaped, became a priest, and returned to the Emerald Isle to do some hard-core evangelizing. His evangelizing was so hard-core that you have no idea how hard-core it was: he converted the entire island to Christianity.
Not a lot is known about the man himself, but stories abound. Many of them involve facing off against Druids in trials by fire, which in my mind means that he shot flames from his staff at dudes and burnt them to a crisp. One story in particular mentions how he drove the snakes out of Ireland. He was even a bit of a hipster; he was way into abolishing slavery before it went mainstream and like, most people hadn't heard of it, man. Most importantly, he died on March 17th, which is why the holiday is celebrated when it is...
...and how it is. Spoiler alert: there's lots of drinking involved. It is, after all, an Irish holiday. You'd think that a deeply religious nation like Ireland would have a problem with so much merry-making during Lent, but no, it turns out that they're calling a Theological Time-Out for the weekend.
So! In honour of my current home, let's give a warm round of applause to some of my favourite famous Irish people, in no particular order:
-Bram Stoker
-Liam Neeson
-Enya
-Oscar Wilde
-Flann O'Brien ("A pint of plain is your only man")
-James Joyce
-Pierce Brosnan
-Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter)
-Kenneth Branagh
-Maureen O'Hara
-Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance
I'll be drinking a pint to them, and to many more of the lovely people in this lovely country. Maybe more than a pint. Maybe, like, a drink of Jameson on the side.
