St Patrick’s Day

Nineteen years ago today, I was lying in a hospital bed enduring the pains of an induced labour.

They insisted on interfering because they said I was ten days overdue. I kept bleating on about my five-week cycle and the fact that the labour, which had started at about midnight, was pretty much spot on the 40 weeks according to my calculation. Like I didn’t know which day my baby was conceived and the vagaries of my own cycle!

Anyway, they persisted with their interventions and at about 10.30pm on that St Patrick’s Day, I was wheeled up to theatre for an emergency caesarean whilst they awaited the arrival of the Chief Anaesthetist because the duty doctor was too frightened to administer the pain blocker as I was having some kind of allergic reaction. My face had swollen up and my body was covered in itchy red spots!

My teenager was born at 1.30am on the 18th and we’re going out for a mother/daughter birthday lunch to celebrate tomorrow. More on that later :)

But, back to St Patrick’s Day or Lá Fhéile Pádraig. He is thought to have been born in fifth century Britain, where his father was the deacon of the local Church. As a teenager, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken back to a life of slavery somewhere on the west coast of Ireland. He later said that he had a dream in which God told him to escape and so he fled to the coast and ended up studying to be a priest in France.

Legend has it that, after becoming a bishop, he was called back to ‘save the Irish’ by converting them to Christianity in 432 and his favourite teaching method, until his death 30 years later, utilised the Shamrock to symbolise the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It was not until the 1600s that green ribbons and shamrocks began to be worn in celebration of a specific St Patrick’s Day – prior to that the colour associated with his mission was blue – but it did not become an official public holiday until 1903, as a result of the Money Bank (Ireland) Act 1903, an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament introduced by the Irish MP James O’Mara. However, it was also O’Mara who later introduced the law closing pubs on 17 March after drinking got out-of-hand and this provision was not repealed until the 1970s.

Whilst the first Saint Patrick’s Day parade held in the Irish Free State was held in Dublin in 1931, the first St Patrick’s Day Festival, designed to showcase Ireland and its culture was not held until 17 March, 1996. In subsequent years, it grew from a one day festival to a five day event of concerts and outdoor theatre performances attended by over 600,000 visitors.