Holiday: Chase the snakes away with this crosier for St. Patrick's Day

Take note of St. Patrick's Day with this crosier.

Crosier of the Pierced Serpent: A staff wielded by a religious zealot in their campaign to push out native religious practices from a foreign land.

In researching St. Patrick’s day I wanted to know the origin of the legend that St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland. As it turns out, Ireland was never known to have any snakes living on the island. Instead, the snakes are allegorical for the Druid’s who practiced their native religious traditions in Ireland before Christianity destroyed Ireland’s native religious and cultural practice. 

This is not an uncommon theme in Christian history. The church and its faithful saw all other views as abominable and forced others to convert. Often through violence and destruction ensuring that the practices were as lost to history as possible. This is not a practice I think is positive and I regret only taking the time to learn the history of the festival now.

Like many holidays imported by immigrants to the USA, Americans have reduced it to an excuse to feast and get drunk while perpetuating Irish stereotypes and making everything green, regardless of the possible impact. I always wonder if Chicago dying a river green has negative ecological consequences.

If you are celebrating St. Patrick’s day today, try to be sensitive to the real history of the person and the people under the spotlight.

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Spring seems to be arriving where I live which is an extremely exciting prospect. I can’t want to put away my winter boots with confidence, unfortunately, that will probably be some time in May.

I recently got my second dose of the Moderna COVID vaccine. I know a lot of people and places are transitioning “back to normal” but I hope you all realize that only a small fraction of people have been immunized and we all need to keep wearing masks, maintaining social distance, and limiting our contacts to ensure we can get out from under COVID’s thumb. Think about it like we are in the final stretch of a race that we have been fighting to finish, you don’t stop and celebrate because the finish line is in sight, you have to keep pushing and wait until after the race is over to fully celebrate.

We are still all in this together, so be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph