The history of college student’s favorite holiday

By: Hannah Wiley, Managing Editor

Unless you live under a rock and spent all day wondering why the majority of people were wearing green, then you know that this past Tuesday, March. 17, was St. Patrick’s Day. 

St. Patrick’s Day is an Irish holiday that honors patron saint, St. Patrick who died in the fifth century. Born in Roman Britain, he was captured and brought to Ireland as a slave, but escaped later returning to Ireland and is credited for spreading Christianity through the country. 

Unfortunately for St. Patrick it took about four centuries for them to actually start to celebrate his life. During the ninth and 10th the Christians began having a feast in honor of his life and chose March 17 because that was believed to be the day he died. Given that the holiday falls during Lent, they would attend church in the morning and prohibitions on eating meat were waved as they danced and drank the night away. 

In typical American fashion, we claimed the holiday during the 17th century and it evolved into a time of binge drinking – if you're a college student – as well as extravagant parades. One of my personal favorite traditions is wearing green, because rumor has it if you’re dressed in green you become invisible to any leprechauns. If you choose not to wear green however you subject yourself to getting pinched by the mischievous creatures, or if you're me getting pinched by a certain Editor-In-Chief. 

If you didn’t go to the parade, don’t worry I didn’t either so you didn’t miss anything (I think). If you did go to the parade, I hope you had a good time and didn’t wake up too hungover the next morning. 

Cheers,

H.W.