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More to St. Patrick's Day than green beer
 |
Patron saint of Ireland is an opportunity for Irish Americans to explore their history and culture
by Barry W. Dugan - Managing Editor
If St. Patrick were alive today, the humble holy man, who brought Christianity to Ireland and prompted a cultural and spiritual upheaval on the island, might be shocked at how the celebration of his legacy has evolved.
“What in the name of the Holy Trinity do green beer and those silly green hats have to do with celebrating yours truly, the patron saint of Ireland?” he might ask.
For those who rely solely on pop culture, St. Patrick's Day has joined the ranks of Easter, Cinco de Mayo and Valentine's Day in its reliance on banal greeting cards, hollow rituals and facile stereotypes. Irish culture contains a rich tradition of music and literature and a deep spiritual foundation. But you wouldn't know it by the proliferation of stereotypical images of drunken louts.
Those with an interest in Irish history and culture and St. Patrick's place in the Irish experience, can still discover meaning in the holiday. It can be an opportunity to truly celebrate and explore what it means to be an Irish-American.
“This day allows much more of a role for the story of the Irish, worldwide,” said Margaret Mc Peake, co-director of Irish Studies at the New College of California in San Francisco. “It provides a point of coming together around Irish culture ... it's a moment in American culture, and in other lands, where there is space made available for the Irish to think about their experience and come together on aspects of their cultural inheritance.”
New College of California is sponsoring the “Crossroads Irish American Festival,” with events that started March 8 and continue to March 17 (newcollege.edu). “It's a week of poetry, history and scholarly reflection on what it means to be Irish American,” said Mc Peake. “We try to give an overview of what issues are important to Irish Americans and what are little known facts ... these things that don't get represented in the the discussion on the Irish in America.”
One of those facts is that Irish immigration included all of the Americas - not just the United States.
“When people think about Irish Americans they think about the U.S.,” said Mc Peake. “But Irish people have come to the Americas as a whole .... there is quite a large community of people of Irish heritage in Argentina.”
Among the guests at this week's “Crossroads” program at New College were an Irish Cuban writer, a Puerto Rican novelist of Irish descent, and a Native American-Irish musician.
“We want people to think about America as a larger space when they think about Irish Americans ... we think Irish American tends to be white ... we want people to be more conscious of the Irish American community as a multi-faceted community that includes people of color.”
This Saturday, March 17 is St. Patrick's Day, a day that is ostensibly a celebration of the man who brought Christianity to an island that at the time was inhabited by pagans and druids.
It seems fitting that St. Patrick himself was not Irish. While accounts of his birth vary, it is widely reported that he was born in Scotland, the son of British-Romans and Christians.
Being on the outer edges of the declining Roman Empire, Ireland had been isolated from the spread of Christianity. That all began to change about the year 403 when a band of Irish pirates kidnapped the 16-year-old Patrick (who still went by the name Maewayn Succat) from his father's villa in Scotland. After six years in slavery in Ireland tending sheep, the young man had a dream in which a voice told him to escape, so he did, travelling 200 miles and begging for safe passage on a ship back to England.
After returning to Britain he then went on to Gaul, where he studied to become a priest. He had another mystical experience in which the voice of the Irish people implored him to return to Ireland to spread Christianity.
“In the context of Irish history, Patrick is this really fascinating figure who was kidnapped into slavery and brought to Ireland against his will,” said Mc Peake, “and who escaped from that slavery and had a vision that brought him back.”
Scholars debate the process of how quickly and just how Christianity spread through Ireland, Mc Peake said, but Patrick's influence on the existing indigenous pagan culture is undeniable. “In many ways what Patrick offered was a vision of replacing a value system with one that was not a hierarchical system,” she said. “That was a revolutionary model ... to some extent you can see Patrick as bringing ideas of liberation to Ireland.”
While the Catholic Church is certainly hierarchical, Mc Peake points out that “it is hierarchical in a way the people were valued as individuals. It is a vision of equality ... that all beings have sacred value in and of themselves. That is a very valuable piece that continues to have a place in Irish society.”
Mc Peake sees St. Patrick's personal journey as symbolic of his message of the value of the individual. “I think there is something of value to be said about Patrick's slavery and coming back to say, ‘there is another way of thinking about the individual,'” she said.
But there was also conflict with the Christian model overlaying the old druid system. “I can also see that the Christian model has been problematic for Irish culture. The indigenous belief system in terms of the position of women and their multiple ideas of marriage and what constituted marriage were at odds with the Christian view,” said Mc Peake. “There was a lot of conflict around that in early Christianity.”
A courageous man
Stories of St. Patrick also tell of a courageous man, plagued with self doubt and insecurities. Unfortunately, most people only think he drove the snakes out of Ireland (of which there were none to begin with). Philip Freeman, in “St. Patrick of Ireland,” writes “Everyone has heard of St. Patrick ... but the man most people know is little more than an icon who drove the snakes out of Ireland.”
“This lack of knowledge about the real Patrick is truly regrettable, because he has such an amazing story to tell: a tale of slavery and brutality, pain and self-doubt, sorrow and constant struggle, but ultimately of perseverance, hope, and faith.”
His spiritual writings in his “Confessio” are some of the “earliest documents we have about Ireland,” said Mc-Peake. “It's a fascinating kind of window into that world and into the mind of Patrick. He was tremendously humble.” The document “is very rare to have in that time in Irish history.”
According to Freeman, Patrick was a controversial figure among his church superiors. In “Confessio” he defends himself and his work in Ireland: “He picked ignorant Patrick ahead of all of you - even though I am not worthy - he picked me to go forth with fear and reverence - and without any of you complaining at the time - to serve the Irish faithfully.”
The arrival of St. Patrick and Christianity also brought a gradual transformation of the indigenous oral tradition in Ireland, said Mc Peake. “Writing came to Ireland through Christianity,” she said. “In the indigenous culture it was an oral tradition. There was a very highly developed model in the society of professions that were dedicated to carrying various bodies of knowledge forward ... legal scholars, poets, who in some way were historians ... it was a very highly developed system of how knowledge passes from generation to generation.”
Mc Peake sees this transition from an oral to written tradition as “a kind of positive-negative thing.”
While the oral tradition being replaced with the written word was a loss, “on the other hand it produced the texts we have now, and you depend on these early Christian scribes for the know of pre-Christian culture,” she said.
Obviously, there is more to St. Patrick's Day than the chainstores and card shops would have you believe. You just have to look a little deeper than the green beer and “Kiss Me I'm Irish” tee-shirts.
Crossroads Irish American Festival, March 8 - 17 (newcollege.edu). Poetry, history and scholarly reflection on what it means to be Irish-American.
“What in the name of the Holy Trinity do green beer and those silly green hats have to do with celebrating yours truly, the patron saint of Ireland?” he might ask.
For those who rely solely on pop culture, St. Patrick's Day has joined the ranks of Easter, Cinco de Mayo and Valentine's Day in its reliance on banal greeting cards, hollow rituals and facile stereotypes. Irish culture contains a rich tradition of music and literature and a deep spiritual foundation. But you wouldn't know it by the proliferation of stereotypical images of drunken louts.
Those with an interest in Irish history and culture and St. Patrick's place in the Irish experience, can still discover meaning in the holiday. It can be an opportunity to truly celebrate and explore what it means to be an Irish-American.
“This day allows much more of a role for the story of the Irish, worldwide,” said Margaret Mc Peake, co-director of Irish Studies at the New College of California in San Francisco. “It provides a point of coming together around Irish culture ... it's a moment in American culture, and in other lands, where there is space made available for the Irish to think about their experience and come together on aspects of their cultural inheritance.”
New College of California is sponsoring the “Crossroads Irish American Festival,” with events that started March 8 and continue to March 17 (newcollege.edu). “It's a week of poetry, history and scholarly reflection on what it means to be Irish American,” said Mc Peake. “We try to give an overview of what issues are important to Irish Americans and what are little known facts ... these things that don't get represented in the the discussion on the Irish in America.”
One of those facts is that Irish immigration included all of the Americas - not just the United States.
“When people think about Irish Americans they think about the U.S.,” said Mc Peake. “But Irish people have come to the Americas as a whole .... there is quite a large community of people of Irish heritage in Argentina.”
Among the guests at this week's “Crossroads” program at New College were an Irish Cuban writer, a Puerto Rican novelist of Irish descent, and a Native American-Irish musician.
“We want people to think about America as a larger space when they think about Irish Americans ... we think Irish American tends to be white ... we want people to be more conscious of the Irish American community as a multi-faceted community that includes people of color.”
This Saturday, March 17 is St. Patrick's Day, a day that is ostensibly a celebration of the man who brought Christianity to an island that at the time was inhabited by pagans and druids.
It seems fitting that St. Patrick himself was not Irish. While accounts of his birth vary, it is widely reported that he was born in Scotland, the son of British-Romans and Christians.
Being on the outer edges of the declining Roman Empire, Ireland had been isolated from the spread of Christianity. That all began to change about the year 403 when a band of Irish pirates kidnapped the 16-year-old Patrick (who still went by the name Maewayn Succat) from his father's villa in Scotland. After six years in slavery in Ireland tending sheep, the young man had a dream in which a voice told him to escape, so he did, travelling 200 miles and begging for safe passage on a ship back to England.
After returning to Britain he then went on to Gaul, where he studied to become a priest. He had another mystical experience in which the voice of the Irish people implored him to return to Ireland to spread Christianity.
“In the context of Irish history, Patrick is this really fascinating figure who was kidnapped into slavery and brought to Ireland against his will,” said Mc Peake, “and who escaped from that slavery and had a vision that brought him back.”
Scholars debate the process of how quickly and just how Christianity spread through Ireland, Mc Peake said, but Patrick's influence on the existing indigenous pagan culture is undeniable. “In many ways what Patrick offered was a vision of replacing a value system with one that was not a hierarchical system,” she said. “That was a revolutionary model ... to some extent you can see Patrick as bringing ideas of liberation to Ireland.”
While the Catholic Church is certainly hierarchical, Mc Peake points out that “it is hierarchical in a way the people were valued as individuals. It is a vision of equality ... that all beings have sacred value in and of themselves. That is a very valuable piece that continues to have a place in Irish society.”
Mc Peake sees St. Patrick's personal journey as symbolic of his message of the value of the individual. “I think there is something of value to be said about Patrick's slavery and coming back to say, ‘there is another way of thinking about the individual,'” she said.
But there was also conflict with the Christian model overlaying the old druid system. “I can also see that the Christian model has been problematic for Irish culture. The indigenous belief system in terms of the position of women and their multiple ideas of marriage and what constituted marriage were at odds with the Christian view,” said Mc Peake. “There was a lot of conflict around that in early Christianity.”
A courageous man
Stories of St. Patrick also tell of a courageous man, plagued with self doubt and insecurities. Unfortunately, most people only think he drove the snakes out of Ireland (of which there were none to begin with). Philip Freeman, in “St. Patrick of Ireland,” writes “Everyone has heard of St. Patrick ... but the man most people know is little more than an icon who drove the snakes out of Ireland.”
“This lack of knowledge about the real Patrick is truly regrettable, because he has such an amazing story to tell: a tale of slavery and brutality, pain and self-doubt, sorrow and constant struggle, but ultimately of perseverance, hope, and faith.”
His spiritual writings in his “Confessio” are some of the “earliest documents we have about Ireland,” said Mc-Peake. “It's a fascinating kind of window into that world and into the mind of Patrick. He was tremendously humble.” The document “is very rare to have in that time in Irish history.”
According to Freeman, Patrick was a controversial figure among his church superiors. In “Confessio” he defends himself and his work in Ireland: “He picked ignorant Patrick ahead of all of you - even though I am not worthy - he picked me to go forth with fear and reverence - and without any of you complaining at the time - to serve the Irish faithfully.”
The arrival of St. Patrick and Christianity also brought a gradual transformation of the indigenous oral tradition in Ireland, said Mc Peake. “Writing came to Ireland through Christianity,” she said. “In the indigenous culture it was an oral tradition. There was a very highly developed model in the society of professions that were dedicated to carrying various bodies of knowledge forward ... legal scholars, poets, who in some way were historians ... it was a very highly developed system of how knowledge passes from generation to generation.”
Mc Peake sees this transition from an oral to written tradition as “a kind of positive-negative thing.”
While the oral tradition being replaced with the written word was a loss, “on the other hand it produced the texts we have now, and you depend on these early Christian scribes for the know of pre-Christian culture,” she said.
Obviously, there is more to St. Patrick's Day than the chainstores and card shops would have you believe. You just have to look a little deeper than the green beer and “Kiss Me I'm Irish” tee-shirts.
Crossroads Irish American Festival, March 8 - 17 (newcollege.edu). Poetry, history and scholarly reflection on what it means to be Irish-American.
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