Saint Patrick's Day and Appropriated Mythology
I don’t drink so I’ve never taken an interest in Saint Patrick’s Day.
The present day foundation on which this “holiday” rests hasn’t roused my curiosity enough to seek out it’s origins.
In other words, for as long as I’ve been aware of Saint Patrick’s Day, I’ve made the association that:
Saint Patrick = drunk jerks doing pub crawls wearing something green in their wardrobe and at some point in the evening they nurse their drunkenness with a corned beef and cabbage dish.
A few days before Saint Patrick’s 2024 I received an email from Cheech and Chong’s Chews that changed all that.
The email addressed the origins of Saint Patrick and the importance of the date:
March 17 is believed to be date of the passing of Saint Patrick Circa 493 AD
The man who would be known as Saint Patrick was born in Britain as Maewyn Succat to a Christian family at a time when Britain was part of the Roman Empire
Around 16 Maewyn was kidnapped from the west coast of Britain by Irish pirates and forcibly put to work as a sheep herder in Ireland
After six years as a sheep herder he escaped his captors by walking some 200 miles through Ireland and finding a ship to take him back to Britain
In a dream he receives the calling to preach the Gospel, and after priesthood earns him the name of Patricius, he returns to Ireland and suceeds in changing the largely pagan country to Christianity
And somehow while working in this already difficult talk he also found time to banish the snakes out of Ireland permanently. Let’s ignore that Ireland’s climate is too cold for snakes to survive in, and focus on Maewyn’s origin story and biggest achievement as a priest
In that email there was also the interesting factoid that a person who studies reptilians is a herpetologist. An unfortunate career title. (Admit it: you immediately made a mental association between herpes and snakes.)
But there it is. A little research turned a day of wearing green and drinking green beer into a fascinating story. Saint Patrick’s origin story sounds like it would have made a great boy’s adventure story written by Robert Louis Stevenson. It would have been a great companion book to Treasure Island. And his mission of bringing Christianity one village at a time, and one church at a time to pagan Ireland, would have been Scorsese’s companion film to Silence.
But here we are. The holiday is appropriated and turned into an excuse to drink more once it reaches American shores. (How many of your are upset that Saint Patrick’s fell on a Sunday this year and you can’t use it as a means to get out of work early?)
And this is okay.
This is creativity.
To take something and make it your own in some way.
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
Picasso
In a similar way, my graphic novel The Plot, was constructed from a variety of elements:
The Sleeper Agent
Men In Black
The Wrong Man
It’s on Instagram. At the moment.
https://www.instagram.com/theplotwebcomic/?igsh=YmQ1b3B1dGdiOGgw
I plan on removing it soon, so read it while you can, and subscribe so you can be the first to see my new projects.
Enjoy Saint Patrick’s Day responsibly.