St. Patrick's Day
And Forty Wonderful Years...
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As most of you recall, 17 March celebrates not the birth but the death of St. Patrick, a 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and Bishop in Ireland. Much of what we think we know about him comes from a Declaration allegedly written by Patrick himself. He was probably born into a wealthy Romano-British family. His father was a deacon and his grandfather was a priest in the Christian church. According to the Declaration, Irish raiders kidnapped Patrick when he was sixteen. He supposedly spent six years in Gaelic Ireland working as a shepherd where he found God. The Declaration says that God told Patrick to flee to the coast, where a ship would wait to take him home. After making his way home, Patrick became 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 were eventually turned into an allegory in which he drove the snakes out of Ireland. These “snakes” were the heathen practices of non-Christians.
Actual snakes never inhabited the Emerald Isle.
We say St. Patrick died on 17 March, sometime in the 5th Century…we think. At least that’s his feast day since the 17th Century. Tradition holds that he is buried at Downpatrick, but no one knows that for sure, either. There’s more that we don’t know about him than we can say we know for sure, even that he ever existed. But don’t tell an Irishman he didn’t exist unless you want a real donnybrook, because over the following centuries, many legends grew up around Patrick, and he became Ireland's foremost saint.
Then there’s St. Patrick’s Day…
This Christian saint’s day is celebrated worldwide regardless of ethnic Irish population density, primarily since the 19th Century. For the most part, it’s an excuse to drink in excess, wear green, and try to shout in Gaelic…badly. It’s a national holiday in the Irish Republic (Erie, pronounced air), and is celebrated by masses, parties, parades, and other forms of revelry. And, on 17 March 1984, by a wedding…
Happy Anniversary, Ev!
Yes, forty years ago today my Evelyne and I said “I do” in front of all the people who could make it to that little wedding chapel in Waukesha, Wisconsin. I think the headcount was around twenty…
Good God, were we ever that young?
Apparently, we were, because this is an unretouched photo taken by our brother-in-law Steve in the traditional cake-cutting ceremony that afternoon in a Milwaukee airport restaurant that’s no longer there. Ev still has that suit; mine, I have no idea where it went. But we’ve been through a great deal in forty years, and our family and circle of friends have both shrunk and grown in that time. But we’ve only moved once, from Waukesha to West Allis in 1986. We told each other than that we wouldn’t move again until…well, we had to. And even then, we’d just buy all new stuff. She’d had one employer all that time; I lost count of mine after a half-dozen.
But it’s been forty memorable years.
I remember them all, even if she doesn’t (my memory has always been better). Wouldn’t trade any of the memories, good and bad. So, I’ll take her to dinner somewhere this evening and we might celebrate it with friends later in the year. But tonight is for us, if you folks don’t mind.