Saint Patrick's Day

     Happy (early) Saint Patrick's Day!! This post kinda follows in the vein of my Valentine's Day post back in February. As you may or may not know, I am fascinated with history, especially stories that you don't often hear about. Anybody every heard of Boudica? I think not! But that's the kind of stuff I love to learn about.

     All that to say I love history and I love learning about history. Now when you think of Saint Patrick's Day, you usually think of leprechauns and clovers and green and gold-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow. All of that is fun, but I think it's important to understand the real history behind Saint Patrick.

     So! Here's a video about the history of Saint Patrick:

     One other thing that I want to mention before the end of this post is about the tradition of wearing green on Saint Patrick's Day. As mentioned in the video, blue was originally associated with Saint Patrick but eventually turned to green. The tradition is that if you don't wear green on Saint Patrick's Day, you'll get pinched.

     But you may not know that some people actually wear orange on Saint Patrick's Day. Why? Well, during the 1920s, Ireland fought to gain independence from the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland ended up staying in the UK, while what is now the Republic of Ireland spilt off and became its own country.

     Without going into too much detail, this split was due in part to the economics of the two areas (Northern Ireland was more industrialized, and Ireland proper was more agricultural), but it also had to do with religion.

     Northern Ireland decided to stay with the UK because they were mostly Protestant/Anglican, and fit well with Anglican England. On the other hand, what is now known as the Republic of Ireland was (and is) mainly Catholic - in part fueling their war for independence - however, there are some Protestants living in this area.

     The flag of Ireland has three colors: green, white and orange, in that order. The green represents the Catholic majority, the orange the Protestant minority, and the white stands for peace between the two groups.

     This background will help explain why some people wear orange on Saint Patrick's Day. Wearing orange on Saint Patrick's Day is a fairly new phenomenon, and is usually done by Protestants. Whether or not it's meant to protest Catholicism or whatever, I don't know.

     I originally (as in - when I was seven) just knew that it was green for Catholics or other 'uneducated' people, and orange was for us proud Protestants. XD So, I've tried to wear orange on Saint Patrick's Day. But I always wear a tiny bit of green somewhere so I can escape being pinched. :)

     Sorry about the possibly dry, definitely longer, post. Here's our quote for the week, attributed to Saint Patrick of Ireland.

The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelieving heart, so that I should recall my sins.

     Thanks for reading!