St. Patrick, Snakes, and Doing Our Own Thing

Every March 17th we put on green, pour something festive, and celebrate the story of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland.

Which is impressive, considering Ireland probably didn’t have any snakes.

Historians will tell you the snakes were symbolic.
Pagan rituals.
Nature worship.
Seasonal festivals.
All the lively, slightly unruly things that tend to happen when people spend too much time outdoors noticing the moon.

Pre-Christian Ireland was full of bonfires, sacred wells, fertility symbols, and the general understanding that spring means something. The earth wakes up, the body wakes up, the whole place gets a little more enthusiastic, and nobody feels the need to file a report about it.

Then the missionaries arrive, take one look around, and decide the situation needs structure.

Out with the snakes.
Out with the old rituals.
Out with the idea that the natural world might know what it’s doing.

To be fair, the early Church loved a system. Systems are comforting. Systems keep things orderly. Systems make it easier to believe the universe is under proper management and not being run by the moon, the tides, and whatever Venus feels like doing this week.

Fortunately, nature never gets the memo.

Spring still shows up every year like she owns the place.
The days get longer.
People start feeling suspiciously cheerful.
Music sounds better.
Clothes get lighter.
Someone opens a window and suddenly everybody needs to go outside immediately.

And on the holiday that’s supposed to celebrate driving the wildness out of the world, we put on bright green, drink too much, sing too loudly, and behave like a crowd of extremely happy pagans at a fertility festival.

Which, historically speaking, is probably exactly what was happening before anyone started chasing snakes.

They can preach at nature.
They can try to organize her.
They can write tedious essays controlling her.

But the minute the weather turns warm, she goes right back to doing her thing.

Honestly, I think that’s the real St. Patrick’s Day tradition.

Less fear.
More rightness in your bones.
A little fresh air.
A little music.
A general willingness to dance with LIFE.

The snakes, if they were ever there at all, would completely understand.

Sláinte,
Lori Randall Stradtman

Here's a little more about it from The Galway City Museum.