I know that we in North America tend to pronounce "tt" in the middle of a word as "dd", but St Patrick's Day is properly written as "St Paddy" not "St Patty".
"The Snakes" were the actual Irish / Celts who didnt follow Christianity BTW. So you are actually drinking to a foreign invader essentially committing ethnic cleansing
The Celts also use to be a forest people with their culture deeply connected to trees, but the Romans deforested purposefully to take away their way of life. Very few old growth trees remain today. Thanks for sharing. I don’t think most people know much about Irish history other than the famine.
Patrick didn’t kill all the snakes, he ran them off. Except there were never snakes in Ireland, the fossil record lacks them. Snakes are symbols of rebirth worldwide. Hallstatt culture is as old as Ancient Greece, snakes existed in continental Europe, Hippocrates is 800 years younger than the celts
Germanic paganism is not Irish paganism, and neither of them are Mediterranean paganism. Multiple things can be true, and while I love shitting on St. Pat as a generalisation, it's still a legend and no more real than King Arthur. It's all stories built upon by generations. There WAS a genocide in
"pagan" refers to literally any polytheist religion. saying "the symbol for rebirth in pagan imagery is a snake" is like saying "pharaoh is the african word for king"
There's certainly a discussion to be had about the loss of knowledge of celtic religions and christianization. That said, what your local reconstructionist pagan group tells you does not come from an unbroken line to those original practitioners. They really do sometimes make stuff up.
There's nothing wrong with being part of a reconstructionist religion but you have to acknowledge it is that. I'm not saying have to follow the anthropological or historical evidence when it comes to your own religion but you have to see that some parts were made by modern spiritual leaders
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So we drink... and enjoy ourselves because they'll never enjoy themselves with others.
(Oh, it’s a movie reference, grow up and rent some disks. 😛)
...shamrock neither