ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!

I remember once in Junior High I overheard a classmate of Irish descent explain to a teacher why she celebrates St. Patrick's day. "St. Patrick was Irish," she said "So we really celebrate the holiday more than most families do. We're really Irish!" She was dressed all in green with lick-on shamrock tattoos on both cheeks.

The teacher was smiling and nodding her head, when I interrupted, "Actually, St. Patrick was from England," I said. "He was brought to Ireland as a slave, but he escaped, and after coming to Christianity he voluntarily returned to Ireland to introduce them to Christianity."

That's not an exact quote I'm sure. It has been a long time since this exchange took place, but I remember some of the words I chose, because I was careful back then about how I talked about my faith in the public arena. "Introduce them to Christianity" sounds like he gave them a disease or something. Here I was speaking their secular language to describe the event, which in my heart of hearts I would have preferred to describe in more personal language. Had I described this summary of St. Patrick's life to sympathetic Christian ears it would have sounded more like, "After he came to know the Lord, he voluntarily returned to Ireland to tell them about Christ." As a boy I felt weird and different for being a Christian, and I was a tad bullied by the disapproval of my peers into avoiding any direct, naked discussions about my faith so I generally talked about it as though I were a detached observer and not as the participant that I truly was. I regret that.

(Confession- In truth, I was enjoying this moment a little too much. Pride gave birth to this exchange. I was an obnoxious, little, know-it-all sort of kid in Jr. High, and I wasn't primarily concerned with confronting their secular notions with the unsanitized truth of the holiday's religious beginnings, but with simply showing off a little of my knowledge. I'm sure it rubbed them both the wrong way, and they can't be blamed for that. I am still trying to shed my contentious nature. I share this so that you will know that I am not exactly proud of this story.)

The teacher looked at me puzzled for a second, her head cocked to the side and hands on her hips. The girl looked at me like I had just said that the capital of the United States was actually Cleveland, Ohio. After a moment the teacher said, "Is that right? Well, we'll have to look that up." She went over to an encyclopedia, which was nearby because we were in the library, and after a few minutes came back confirming that St. Patrick was, in fact, a Briton.

Victory!

Although, like most American mongrels, I can never be exhaustively or exactly sure of my ancestry, there is not a strong Irish presence in my family tree. If anything it tends to lean more heavily towards other portions of the British Isles. But I do celebrate St. Patrick's day, but not because he was a Briton (as were my ancestors actually! Isn't that word "ACTUALLY" an obnoxious sort of word?) but because we are brothers in the same family and in the same cause. The family being that of Christ, and the cause being that of Christ also.

One of Bowden's teachers at school was struggling recently to explain to him and some of his classmates why St Patrick's day is a holiday and told him that St Patrick is somebody we celebrate because he freed slaves in Ireland. At breakfast this morning, Bowden told Sarah that this is why we celebrate St Patrick's day. I was outraged. A paid educator taking such pains to avoid any endorsement of Christianity (perceived or otherwise) that she completely misrepresented the holiday's beginnings and the man, St Patrick. Maybe she was just bullied by the disapproval of her peers, I don't know, but I wanted to go to school, seek this teacher out and have an actually-filled conversation with her. In fact, I might. As I think about it that teacher wasn't so far from the truth after all if she meant that Patrick helped to free men from their slavery to sin and death by introducing them to Christ, but I doubt that's what she meant.. St. Patrick did come to Ireland to free slaves. I have to own that is true.

So, unlike some,  I won't be pretending that I'm Irish today, but then again I don't need to. For I am a Briton (by ancestry), as was the good St. Patrick, but more importantly I am a Christian, which was St. Patrick's raison d'etre, and, actually, it's mine also.