Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, “the Day of the Festival of Patrick”), is a cultural and religious celebration occurring annually on 17 March, the death date of the most commonly-recognised patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick.
Before you belly up to the bar for your St. Patrick’s Day celebration, check out these fun facts.
You better sit down for this one. St. Patrick was not Irish! His dad was Italian, his mother was Scottish and he was born in Scotland. His birth name was Maewyn Succat. Who knew? And the whole chasing snakes out of Ireland? Just a legend.
Raise Your Glass. On the average day, 5.5 million pints of Guinness are consumed around the world. That number more then doubles on St. Patrick’s Day, with more than 13 million pints going down the hatch.
Better book that church now. St. Patrick’s Day is considered the luckiest day of the year to get married. Unless it is a Saturday. According to Irish superstition, Saturday is the worst day of the week to get married. As the proverb states “Marry on Monday for wealth – Tuesday for health – Wednesday the best day of all – Thursday for losses – Friday for crosses – Saturday for no luck at all.”
Keep your eye on the prize, and the leprechaun. Legend has it that if you catch a leprechaun, he will promise great wealth if you let him go. However, don’t take your eyes off him or he will vanish!
Four leaf clovers — for your eyes only. Found a four leaf clover? Great. You will now have good luck in gambling and racing and it will render witchcraft powerless! However, you must always carry it with you and never show it to others, or your luck will fail.
Get your green on! Consider yourself warned: if you don’t wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, people are allowed to pinch you. It was believed that wearing green made you invisible to leprechauns, who would pinch anyone they could see. Revelers began pinching those who didn’t wear green as a reminder of that belief.
