A Brief History of St. Patrick's Day

Saint Patrick's Day (in Irish: Lá ’le Pádraig or Lá Fhéile Pádraig), colloquially St. Paddy's Day or Paddy's Day, is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick (385–461 AD), one of the patron saints of ireland , and is generally celebrated on March 17.

 The day is the national holiday of Ireland. It is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland, and a poublic holiday in the Republic of Ireland. In the rest of the world it is widely celebrated but is not an official holiday.

It became a  feast day in teh Roman Catholic Church due to the influence of the Waterford born Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding in the early part of the 17th century, and is a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. 

Celebrating St Patrick’s Day

The St. Patrick's Day parade iin Dublin is part of a five-day festival; with over 600,000 people attending the parade through the city street on March 17th.   

A Brief History of St. Patrick

Saint Patrick (in Irish: Naomh Pádraig) was a Christian missonary and is the patron saint of Ireland along with Brigid of Kilare and Columba.

It is known that St. Patrick was born in Britain to wealthy parents near the end of the fourth century. When he was about sixteen he was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he had to work for six years as a shepherd, outdoors and away from people. There is some dispute over where this captivity took place. Although many believe it took place in Mount Slemish in County Antrim, it is more likely that he was held in County Mayo near Killala.  During this time, Lonely and afraid, he turned to his religion for solace, becoming a devout Christian.

After more than six years as a prisoner, Patrick escaped. According to his writing, a voice-which he believed to be God's-spoke to him in a dream, telling him it was time to leave Ireland.

To do so, Patrick walked nearly 200 miles from County Mayo to the Irish coast. After escaping back to his family in Britain, Patrick reported that he experienced a second revelation-an angel in a dream told him to return to Ireland as a missionary. Soon after, Patrick began religious training, a course of study that lasted more than fifteen years.

He later returned to Ireland as a missionary, working in the north and west of the island, but little is known about the places where he actually worked and no link can be made with Patrick and any church. By the eighth century he had become the patron saint of Ireland.

The available body of evidence does not allow the dates of Patrick's life to be fixed with certainty, but it appears that he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the 5th century.

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