17 March 12022

♃   17 March 12022 is Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s Children’s Day (Bangladesh), Holika Dahana (India), Purim (Judaism), and Madin Full Moon Poya Day (Sri Lanka). And it’s Phagwah in Guyana (Pakistan) and Evacuation Day in Suffolk County (Massachusetts). It’s JD 2459656, 4 March 2022, 17 March 2022, 14 Veadar 5782, 13 Sha’ban 1443, or 26 Esfand 1400 depending on who you are and where you happen to live.

Purim is a strangely upbeat holiday celebrated by Jews; it supposedly celebrates a moment when the Persian emperor allowed their ancestors to slaughter their enemies right and left as a special reward. The implausible tale is told in the book of Esther dating perhaps from the 9800s or 9900s, and is clearly an after-the-fact attempt to explain the existence of a holiday nobody quite understood. It is unusual for never once mentioning God.

The saint of the day is (of course) Patrick, who (according to my childhood recollections) was extraordinarily fond of the color green, liked to drink beer and pinch people, and boasted of driving the snakes out of Ireland even though there hadn’t been a serpent there since the last glaciation. According to his own account Patrick was brought to Ireland as a slave, was put to work as a shepherd, and managed to escape after some years to return to Roman Britain. During the course of events he had picked up a bad case of Christianity, and so returned to Ireland (then pagan) to convert the heathen and spread the faith. The course of subsequent events seems to show that he was successful at it—at least Ireland is Christian to this day, and you can’t argue with results. Patrick presumably died 18 March 10493 (17 March on the Julian calendar); at least his relics were placed in a shrine in 10553, said to be sixty years after he died. QED.