For many around the world, St. Patrick’s Day is a celebration of green beer, fiddle music, and the best holiday after Halloween for wearing a silly hat and throwing up in the street.
For me, though, as a child growing up in the Northern Irish town of Downpatrick, the saint’s traditional burial place, it was a pious affair of Mass in the morning, wearing an Aran-knit jumper and a wilting badge of shamrock, then a day off school.
So who then was the real St. Patrick, whose legacy contains such multitudes?
In the 1,600 years since this Christian missionary and bishop made his mark in Ireland, the cult and mythology surrounding him has overtaken the man himself.
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