Saint Patrick's Day
The day of the Festival of Patrick is a cultural and religious celebration held on March 17, the tradtional death date of St. Patrick, the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
St. Patrick's Day was made an official Christian feast day in the 17th century. The celebrations generally involved public parades and festivals and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.
St. Patrick's Day is a public holiday in the republic of Ireland, the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the British overseas territory of Montserrat. In recent years there has been criticism of St. Patrick's Day celebrations for having become too commercialized and for fostering negative stereotypes for the Irish.
Saint Patrick
Patrick was a 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Much of what is known about Saint Patrick comes from the Declaration, which was allegedly written by Patrick himself. It is believed that he was born in Roman Britain in the 4th century into a wealthy Romanado-British family. His father was a deacon, and his grandfather was a piest in the Christian chruch. According to the Declaration, at the age of sixteen he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Gaelic Ireland. It says that he spent six years there working as a shepherd and that during this time he "found God." The Declaration says 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.
According to tradition, Patrick returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. The Declaration says that he spent many years evangelising in the northern half of Ireland and converted "thousands." Patrick's efforts against the druids were eventually truned into an allegory in which he drove "snakes" out of Ireland. (Ireland never had any snakes.)
Tradition holds that he died on March 17th and was buried at Downpatrick. Over the following centuries, many legends grew up around Patrick, and he became Ireland's foremost saint.
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