St. Patrick, Designated Driver?

Most of us have only just recovered from the excesses of Pi Day  and now face St. Patrick's Day with all the parades, green ale and shamrock-festooned aluminum-foil hats. 

It all makes you tax your aching head with a reason to go on another damned... church service.

St. Patrick is about as authentic as Punxsutawney Phil.  Oh, yes, Pat (Latin for Paddy) existed, about 1800 years ago just as Phil does today, but he was born on the very wrong side of what even the English now call the Irish Sea.  Pat was, in fact, a Romanized Celt, as opposed to the Romanticized Celt he is today.  Pat probably spoke both Latin and Celt, which are pretty close Gaelic, but deader.  On a pirate ship home, he heard voices--Paddy, it's a pirate ship!--and became a Born Again Christian.  This after being enslaved to tend sheep for seven long years while atop Brokeback Mountain, Ireland.

Yes, a pirate ship, but maybe it was another mountain. 

Anyway, Patrick converted, became a priest  And turned right around and went back to Ireland in a missionary role.  You can figure that he provided the voices needed to convert others to Christianity, because he did better than any other missionary of his era.  He also provided shamrocks to his flock--the converts, since he didn't have to work the sheep any more--to explain how the Holy Trinity and photosynthesis make sense.

Do not try this at home.

Legend has it that St. Patrick drove all the snakes off of Ireland and all the way to Australia just to eat some bunny rabbits, but ophiologists (Latin and, maybe Celt, too, for snakeologists) tell us that Ireland never did have any snakes (any more than Australia had rabbits, for that matter).  That is because nothing with even a tiny brain really wanted to live on that cold green rock and snakes pretty much get their own way about such things.  Still, it's a good myth and may have some allegorical meaning that is best sorted out at great length after, say, 10:45 on March 17th.

Speaking of which, Green Beer did not enter in the picture at all for the eventually-patron-sainted ventriloquist (the voices you'll hear, remember?).  Though he understood both the Trinity and photosynthesis, Pat could not synthesize a decent tasting green dye, a feat still not mastered from what you probably don't remember of last year's celebration.

On second thought, maybe that mountain got confused with some parade thing.

Notwithstanding the confusion to come, St. Patrick did give us one holiday on which we don't have to buy flowers, candy and cards. Or jewelry, should the day be missed somehow.  Everyone, even the profane and inane among us, sees St. Patrick's day heading in.

If not always passing out.