The Folklore an “Fun”dementals

By Payton McKelvey

St. Patrick’s Day is often overlooked as the most insignificant of the big holidays. We associate this day with leprechauns, shamrocks, rainbows, pots of gold, and of course, the colour green! But why do we wear green on March 17th? What makes it so significant on that specific day? There’s a folklore that tells of the magical creatures we know from fairy stories, such as unicorns and leprechauns. It explains the true origin of wearing the colour green on St. Patrick’s Day. Legend says that people would wear green on St. Patrick’s Day to ward off the mythical creatures because the colour green made them invisible to said creatures. You may wonder why we want to make ourselves invisible to these creatures. You see, leprechauns are particularly mischievous creatures and like to play tricks on humans. On St. Patrick’s Day, the sneaky little creatures will run around and pinch people; those who wear green are safe because they are invisible, and those who don’t are doomed to be pinched. The idea of pinching people when they are not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day came from this. So when you pinch your friends who are lacking green on March 17th, just blame it on those sneaky little leprechauns. The deeper history of this colour choice goes back to Saint Patrick himself. Ireland is nicknamed the “Emerald Isle” but was initially associated with the colour blue. It was not until around the 1700s that the colour was shifted from blue to green. This is because Saint Patrick used the Shamrock in his teaching of the Holy Trinity. The colour green was then associated with the Catholics, which makes sense because the original St. Patrick’s Day was a Catholic holiday. The green on the Irish flag is also used to represent the Catholics who live in Ireland; the orange represents the protestants, and the white the peace between them. The traditions that we’ve come to know and love today were, in fact, mostly created by the United States. They turned St. Patrick’s Day from a religious holiday to a largely secular holiday. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in Boston in 1737, and it has continued to be a widespread American tradition since then. Other popular and general practices are dressing in green, wearing shamrocks on clothing, eating corned beef and cabbage, and even dyeing beer green. Initially, Ireland did not take on these traditions for a holiday but eventually adopted some, mainly for the benefit of tourists. As you can see, this sometimes forgotten holiday has some real and exciting history to back it up. Though it has evolved and changed over the years, it has always maintained a positive spirit behind it. So no matter how you spend your St. Patrick’s Day, just make sure to have fun and wear green so those pesky little leprechauns won’t get you.