It’s a Tuesday morning in March. When said and done, the bleakest time on the most uninspiring day in the trickiest month. If people throughout history could choose their day and time of execution, I have no doubt there’d be a waiting list for Tuesday mornings in March.
This Tuesday in March also happens to fall on the 17th, which is sort of like ‘hump day’ of the month, but in March it opens up a whole other bag of whiskey-soaked worms. Tis St. Patrick’s Day.
When I was a kid, I openly and gleefully believed in the full run of the year’s supernatural holiday characters. I was there with Santa. I did not fear the Easter Bunny, even when he took Santa’s angle and a deranged too-tall rabbit set up shop at a crooked cabin made of candy near the Payless Shoe Store. I was in. So on Saint Patrick’s Day the search was clearly for leprechauns and pixies.
I set up traps. We were told to ‘look anywhere green’ which made complete sense as Ireland was supposed to be green and that’s what everyone wore. Anyway, these traps were crude and involved a shoebox and a stick and a rope, suited more to catching cartoon bunnies and not so much mystical beings known for its slyness and cleverness. It will surprise you in no way to learn that these traps were mostly left unsprung. (I once caught a cricket, but had to let him go under a self-imposed Geneva Convention of fairness and ickiness.)
These days, I read about Celtic folklore a bit more than I did then and it seems that I may have dodged a bullet not catching one of those guys. I might have been brought somewhere I didn’t want to go or turned into a stone whose purpose was to be kissed by tourists.
When I reached adult-ish-hood, St. Patty’s Day was about drinking one’s face off until you actually saw fairies and pixies and leprechauns and started a fist fight with them in the bathroom of a Wawa. Since then, pubs are perennially pounded on this day. In Pittsburgh, this meant the city’s six Irish pubs were overtaken by the masses. I recall a line of ¾ poured Guinness waiting topping off, people shouting orders for their position 4-deep, a band with a banjo player wearing green bowlers, hearing Whiskey in the Jar roughly 200 times in 7 hours, waking up half-on-half-off my bed, my face covered in shamrock stickers, which, when all considered, could have been worse.
The real Saint Patrick was born in Roman Britain in the late 4th century. He was kidnapped by Irish raiders and enslaved, spending several years working as a shepherd in Ireland. During this time he became deeply religious, probably because of all the sheep. After escaping, he helped spread Christianity across Ireland along with a bunch of other similar characters. He droves the snakes out of Ireland, a feat particularly impressive as there are no snakes in Ireland. So this means he brought them there in the first place, which ups his charlatan game heaps. He also used a shamrock to explain Christianity. I think that little green flower does some heavy lifting on this day by way of facial stickers and partial names in drinks (the shamrock shake, comes to mind).
In the end, it’s believed that the snakes are a metaphor for the pagan and pagan religions that he drove out of Ireland. Or, as I like to think it, the far more interesting culture of spirituality. So, a former slave brought a bunch of snakes to Ireland and then scared them away, or he caught and got rid of all the pagans. Anyway, I wonder if he used a trap.
