St. Patrick’s Day, one of my favorite days of the year. Irish people rule. Flogging Molly rules additionally. Just wanted to say.
I was hoping today to be able to explain to my more-or-less loyal readers the origins of St. Patrick’s Day, but in doing the research for the piece, I discovered that St. Patrick was just some Christian missionary who kept getting arrested, not for cool drunken St. Patrick’s Day stuff, but just for being a missionary. So, in traditional Ray fashion, I’ve instead elected to make a bunch of stuff up. I now present said stuff, some of which is mixed in with the real stuff that, as it so often happens when dealing with stuff that is real, is real.
St. Patrick was born Maewyn Succat in Britain towards the end of the fourth century. At the age of 10, he became a cyborg as a result of the socioeconomodineropolitical pressures of the time. This angered Salazaar Slytherin, who didn’t much care for half-breeds thank you very much, and so Maewyn was captured by Irish slavers. Few today are aware that the resulting enslavement, which tends often to happen when captured by slavers, Irish or not, set off a chain of causally related events that included, but is in no way limited to, the extinction of life on Europa, the failure of Communist Russia, and the show Doogie Howser M.D.
After a six-year tenure as an indentured servant, during which time he served under such illustrious Irish figures as Conan O’Brien, Lucky the Leprechaun, and Ronald McDonald, Maewyn quit his job as a slave to study with St. Germain, the patron saint of relevance. In time, he became a bishop, changed his name to Patrick, and headed back to Ireland to convert the pagans to Christianity, believing that this would put an end to Halloween, which had always frightened him terribly.
For thirty years, St. Patrick traveled the lands, saving souls while avoiding arrest by the local Druid community, who rather enjoyed Halloween. At the end of these thirty years, he retired to County Down, where he died on March 17, 461 A.D. That’s right, we celebrate St. Patrick’s death every year. Whatever, I’m not here to judge.
It is said that St. Patrick also drove the snakes out of Ireland, though this is generally regarded as legend, as St. Patrick was usually too intoxicated to drive. This, it turns out, is why heavy drinking is so adamantly encouraged on St. Patrick’s Day. What better way to honor a man’s memory than by mimicking his actions?