There was already Christianity in Ireland before Patrick, so the role of him “converting Ireland” is greatly exaggerated. The conversion was far more gradual, and relatively peaceful.
The snake thing? Yeah, that was made up long after his death, and wasn’t a metaphor. Basically someone beefing up the guy’s reputation with pure nonsense: “Did you hear? He drove all the snakes out of Ireland!”. “But there aren’t any snakes in Ireland!”. “THAT’S WHY!”
He didn’t kill any “pymies”, either. The idea that the African Batwa people ever lived in Ireland is fairly recent, and has been thoroughly disproven.
Can we stop this dumbass tradition of looking for reasons to shit on popular holidays, and trying to make people feel bad for celebrating them? This world–and its history–is full of enough actual, proven death, tragedy, racism, bigotry, sexism as is. We don’t need idiots making up and passing around misinformation to make it feel even worse.
Shut the fuck up, and let people get drunk. Let people have the few days there are to get along, be merry, and forget–even for obe evening–that the world is a flaming dumpster fire.
