Séamas O'Reilly: Now that I’ve lived in England so long, I enjoy St Patrick’s Day more than ever

Since I like being Irish, I now regard St Patrick's Day as a welcome vehicle for my long-held feelings of Hibernian Supremacy, and a handy excuse to push Irish culture on to unsuspecting, but usually grateful, friends here and online

'I watched, bemused, as news footage showed Chicago dying their river green, or the Empire State Building or Sydney Opera House illuminated for the occasion.'

It’s hard to really articulate what St Patrick’s Day is for. It is, at root, a religious holiday obviously, but characterising it in this way today would be stretching things beyond credulity.

Even the faith-denuded extravaganza of modern day Christmas, for all its commercialism and excess, has deep religious practice at its core. Christmas also celebrates, at least on paper, the birth of someone whom 2.2bn Christians consider the most important man to have ever lived, a momentous event in world history, whatever your belief. St Patrick’s Day, by contrast, commemorates the life of a Welshman who made a country that was already Christianising a little more Christian, and stole from the Ice Age full credit for our lack of snakes.

Since my parents were devout Catholics, the St Patrick’s Days of my childhood were religious in nature but, even then, this was a fairly muted form of observance. We went to mass, of course, but that was hardly unusual. We went to mass all the time. It seemed like there wasn’t a month went by without an extra-curricular trip to church, usually in veneration of some child who saw a statue of the Virgin Mary indulging in some pleasingly unstationary activity, like frying an egg or smoking a fag. Weirdly, when universal, portable photography was still in the distant future, it seemed like Europe’s smallest, strangest, children were on a real hot streak of Marian sightings.

“You just missed it” they’d say to their parish priest, before laying out some light plans for their town’s tourism and merchandising opportunities.

As someone who hated going to mass, I cursed these children, both for the command they wielded over my free time, and their lack of imagination. A childhood spent obsessed with weird tales of the uncanny, meant I knew there were more exciting tales to tell. People in the non-Catholic world were at least reporting sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, yetis, or UFOs, and animated statues simply didn’t have the same appeal. Having said that, if a Big Foot had been sighted by a small Slovenian girl, my dad would probably have marched us all to mass in celebration, so we could personally thank the Virgin Mary for sending him.

My other main memory from St Patrick’s Day was the break it offered for Lent, allowing us to resume the addictions we’d forestalled in preparation for Easter. A full 24 hours of hedonism would descend, as my father puffed away contentedly at the Hamlet cigars he’d given up, surrounded by children eating chocolate, sweets and biscuits; committing tax fraud, arranging kidnappings, and injecting heroin. (I used to think selecting this day as a break from lent was just a handily opportune bit of blasphemy. I was disappointed to discover, much later in life, that it was enshrined in church dogma, since other Catholic countries have a Lenten break on Laetare Sunay, and Ireland simply shifted this to St Patrick’s Day to take up the slack. It’s not an exaggeration to say that, upon receiving this knowledge, some small joy died within me forever). My father bought shamrocks the night before. These he then plucked from the little shop-bought punnet of earth and pinned them, still wet, to our lapels before we left the house. We fiddled at them like they were military medals, until our good clothes ended up, quite literally, soiled in the process.

Séamas O'Reilly: 'If a Big Foot had been sighted by a small Slovenian girl, my dad would probably have marched us all to mass in celebration.' Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

As little as I savoured any time spent in church, even I could concede that it made sense for practising Catholics in Ireland to venerate our nation’s patron saint, not least one who died 90 miles down the road. It was the wider phenomenon of St Patrick’s Day which seemed odd to me back then, and still does. I watched, bemused, as news footage showed Chicago dying their river green, or the Empire State Building or Sydney Opera House illuminated for the occasion. Our country’s leaders celebrating our national day, not at home, but in Washington DC, plucked from obscurity for vote-winning pats on the head in the White House. And floats, parties, and parades across the world celebrating, well, usually just Irish people and Irishness in general.

It seemed weird, even absurd, that St Patrick was venerated so specifically, and so universally, while our own local saint — Colmcille, aka St Columba — was more of a regional delicacy.

This becomes more galling when one considers that Columba’s legend actually does include the first written account of my dear friend, the Loch Ness Monster, who he scared away on the 22nd August, 565 AD.

Our parish church was named for St Columba, but did we celebrate that date with a special mass, for which my father pinned a still-wet Nessie to our lapels? No. No, we did not. And the double standard rankles still.

As I grew older, St Patrick’s Day became a drinking holiday that was nebulously connected to ideas of Ireland and Irishness.

After moving to Dublin for college, the eight St Patrick’s Days I spent there traced the same path known to so many new arrivals; two years feeling like I was at the centre of a delighted universe; two spent traipsing around town wondering if this was much fun as I thought it was; and a further four spent sullen and tired, avoiding the city centre as if I had prior warning of an airborne nuclear strike.

Now that I’ve lived in England for so long, I enjoy St Patrick’s Day more than I ever have. Some strange accidents of history have placed March 17th further up the totem pole of national, and international, holidays than makes any sense, but since I like being Irish, I now regard it as a welcome vehicle for my long-held feelings of Hibernian Supremacy, and a handy excuse to push Irish culture on to unsuspecting, but usually grateful, friends here and online.

“Cast your mind back,” I say, “to the shores of a Scottish loch, one sunny August day in 565Ad.” Pinning a still-damp Nessie to their collar, they close their eyes and I begin.