Although St. Patrick’s Day was originally a religious holiday in Ireland to commemorate Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, it is one of most widely celebrated holidays in the world as a day of parades, feasting and drinking beer.
Saint Patrick was a 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. At the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Gaelic Ireland. It’s said that he spent six years there working as a shepherd and that during this time he "found God” and that God told Patrick to flee to the coast, where a ship would be waiting to take him home. After making his way home, Patrick went on to become a priest. He spent many years in Northern Ireland converting Irish to Christianity. Patrick's efforts against the druids were eventually turned into an allegory in which he drove "snakes" out of Ireland—Ireland never had any snakes.
On St Patrick's Day, it is customary to wear shamrocks, green clothing or green accessories (the "wearing of the green"), the color associated with Catholics in Ireland. Interestingly orange was the color associated with Protestant Christians in Ireland and the color representing St. Patrick was blue. St Patrick is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity.
The Luck of the Irish is an American expression and grew out of the gold and silver rush years in the second half of the 19th century where a number of the most famous and successful miners were of Irish and Irish American birth…leading to the expression 'luck of the Irish.'
