Sunday is St. Partick's Days, So Here's Some Fun Facts You May Not Have Known

This Sunday, March 17th, is St. Patrick's Day, and although people know the tradition is to wear green, and possibly join your friends for a drink or two (and sometimes, more than that), here are some interesting and/or fun facts about the person and the holiday you may not have known:

• For most of Christianity's first thousand years, canonisations were done on the diocesan or regional level. Relatively soon after the death of people considered very holy, the local Church affirmed that they could be liturgically celebrated as saints. As a result, Patrick has never been formally canonised by a Pope; nevertheless, various Christian churches declare that he is a Saint in Heaven (and yes, he is officially listed in the List of Saints).

• St. Patrick's Day was a dry holiday in Ireland until 1970. Aside from the color green, the activity most associated with St. Patrick's Day is drinking. However, Irish law, from 1903 to 1970, declared St. Patrick's Day a religious observance for the entire country meaning that all pubs were shut down for the day. That meant no beer, not even the green kind, for public celebrants. The law was overturned in 1970, when St. Patrick's Day was reclassified as a national holiday - allowing the taps to flow freely once again.

• There are more Irish in the USA than Ireland (well, sort of). An estimated 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry. Some are pure-blood Irish, meaning they or their parents came from Ireland, but many more have mixed ancestry today. By contrast, there are 4.2 million people living in Ireland.

• The original color associated with St. Patrick is blue, not green as commonly believed. In several artworks depicting the saint, he is shown wearing blue vestments. Green was associated with the country later, presumably because of the greenness of the countryside, due to Ireland's plentiful rainfall.

• According to legend, St. Patrick drove all the snakes, or in some translations, "toads," out of Ireland. In reality, this probably did not occur, as there is no evidence that snakes have ever existed in Ireland, the climate being too cool for them to thrive. Despite that, scholars suggest that the term "snakes" may be figurative and refer to pagan religious beliefs and practices rather than reptiles or amphibians.

• St. Patrick wasn't Irish, and he wasn't born in Ireland. Patrick's parents were Roman citizens living in modern-day England, or more precisely in Scotland or Wales (scholars cannot agree on which). He was born in 385 AD. By that time, most Romans were Christians and the Christian religion was spreading rapidly across Europe.

• March 17th is actually when Patrick died - his holy day is the day of his death, and subsequent entrance to heaven, rather than the day of his physical birth. After spending most of his adult life converting the pagans of Ireland to Christianity, St. Patrick went to his reward on March 17, 461 AD.

• World's shortest St. Patrick's Day parade - For many years, Dripsey in County Cork had the world's shortest parade, just 77 feet, the distance between two pubs – The Weigh Inn and The Lee Valley.

Now that you know more about St. Patrick's day, feel free to amaze your fiends with a plethora of meaningless tidbits while tipping a few and wearing green. And don't forget to have a designated driver if you are out and about.