On March 17th everyone is Irish! We wear green, drink green beer and shamrock shakes for Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick has become a beloved figure in the Western Hemisphere, but where did Saint Patrick come from? What did he do to become so beloved?
Believe it or not, Saint Patrick is not a canonized saint by the Catholic Church. Patrick was deemed a “saint” before the official canonization process was formed. Check out the list of officially canonized saints here. Yes, Patrick was responsible for missionary journeys in Ireland, but there is also a lot of misinformation about Patrick:
MYTH #1 Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland.
Snakes seem to embody everything evil. We get a lot of distrust of snakes from the book of Genesis because Satan is represented as a serpent. In addition, snakes are elusive, deadly, and just plain scary.
The Patrick snake myth is dispelled:
Ireland, after all, is surrounded by icy ocean waters—much too cold to allow snakes to migrate from Britain or anywhere else. But since snakes often represent evil in literature, “when Patrick drives the snakes out of Ireland, it is symbolically saying he drove the old, evil, pagan ways out of Ireland [and] brought in a new age…
Myth #2 Saint Patrick was Irish
