St. Patrick's Day

Growing up in America, I never knew the history of St. Patrick's Day, or why unlike other holidays we didn't have the day off from school for it, or why we had to wear green or we'd get pinched.

Of course I realized later that the reason was because the man was a saint, a religious figure, and in this country, with the clear separation between church and state (yes, that's sarcasm), we don't officially acknowledge religious days as a national holiday. Like so many other things that we celebrate in this country, I found myself amazed that I only knew the commercialized holiday, and not the real one.

By the way, that whole driving snakes away thing? Total blarney. Ireland was separated from the mainland during the last Ice Age (when it was too cold for snakes to survive on Ireland), and people didn't bring snakes to Ireland (via ships and planes) until modern times. New Zealand is also snakeless, and as far as I know, doesn't have a patron saint taking credit for a natural process.