Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s a day to remember the accomplishments and sacrifices of the great Saint of Ireland. A day to celebrate Irish culture. Within Ireland and a few other countries it’s a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics. In my household, and in deference to my own heritage we celebrate it in the most reverential of fashions….. with Leprechaun Pee.

StPatrick

Maybe I should be doing more. After all, Saint Patrick led a pretty exciting life. They are some of the things about him that my kids are largely ignorant of so far.

  • He’s British!
    • Yup, the patron Saint of Ireland was actually born in Britain (it’s debated that he was born either in Wales, Scotland or near Cumbria, but definitely in Roman Britain) and lived there until he was 16 when…..
  • He was captured by pirates!!
    • Instant street cred there, right?? Upon his kidnapping by Irish pirates he was forced into slavery in Ireland, working as a shepherd. Would have been way cooler to have been a pirate himself for a spell.
  • He escaped slavery and went on the run.
    • By the age that I was mastering N64’s Goldeneye and Mario Kart (seriously, I’ll still whoop any of you) Saint Patrick had run from his owners, convinced a ship to take him on board and across to England, led his fellow passengers into the wilderness and on to civilized England (or as civilized as it could have been back in 432). He is credited as being the first known person to use the phrase “I’ll be back” in a menacing, Austrian accent (also, that is totally made up).
  • He decided to GO BACK to the country he was enslaved in!
    • They must have had some pretty good corned beef back then, because if I were stuck for my entire teenage years being forced to watch sheep, I wouldn’t be in any particular rush to get back. After experiencing a vision in a dream, though, he became a missionary in Ireland landing there as a Bishop and dropping some Catholicism on the scores of super tanned culinary dynamos that made up the Irish population.
  • He banished exactly the same number of Unicorns and Minotaurs from Ireland as he did snakes.
    • That is to say, zero. Ireland never had any snakes. It’s thought to be an interpretation of his conversion of Druids and Pagans who used serpent images in their artwork.

Besides all of this, he went on to start churches across the nation and probably had a cultural impact on Ireland that wouldn’t be matched until boyband Westlife hit the scene in the late 1990’s (so dreamy.)

So how do I celebrate my own heritage every year with my kids? How much of the story of Saint Patrick have I passed on to them, so they can contemplate the great things that he did and realize that they too can do extraordinary things with their lives?? Absolutely none of it. Zero. Zilch. Snakes Out Of Ireland. Instead, we pretend a Leprechaun made its way into our house, made a mess of their rooms, turned the milk green and made green pee in the toilet! Leprechauns clearly need a urinalysis and a kidney checkup.

peeOne day we’ll learn about all of the actual meaning behind the day and hopefully they’ll take something away from it other than “I should skip school, go to NYC and get wasted with my friends” like I did. But for now while they’re youngsters, I’m happy with just letting them enjoy some good old Leprecaunian fun and watching the looks of revolt as they try corned beef and cabbage (why didn’t my ancestors borrow more heavily from the Italians??)