Analysis: As St Patrick's Day always occurs during Lent, it meant tensions between the public holiday celebrations and the moderations of Lent
Growing up in Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s, St Patrick's Day was one of those holidays that sat somewhere between a big event and a minor celebration. A public holiday since 1903 and an official saint's feast day in the church’s liturgical calendar since the early 17th century, the day had grown into a culturally curious mix of a blurry religious-secular 'Irishness’ by the late-20th century.
It came with a set package of associated rituals: making Patrick’s Day badges; feast-day mass followed by parades in the morning; a mid-day dinner, and a general sense of licence to indulge in foods that had been 'given-up’ for the Lenten period. For children, this meant sweets or chocolate; for the adults, cigarettes or alcohol, with consumption of the latter almost sanctioned by tradition in the folk customs of the Pota Phádraig and drowning the shamrock. Nowhere in these customs was there a sense of celebrating with specific foods or re-enacting a collective understanding of Irish culinary tradition by cooking specific dishes that had a traditional tie to the festival.
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From RTÉ Archives, Tommie Gorman reports for RTÉ News on the start of the 1982 pilgrimage season to St Patrick's Purgatory at Station Island on Lough Derg in Co Donegal
But beneath the meagre food traditions associated with the festival were complex fasting rules that attended the Lenten observance amongst Roman Catholic communities. In the church’s liturgical calendar, Lent is considered a penitential season with observance in the form of fasting, abstinence, almsgiving, prayer, and spiritual reflection undertaken in preparation for Easter Sunday.
Traditionally, this partnership between fasting and feasting periods impacted on how and what the faithful ate during the different church seasons. In preparation for Easter, religious communities were encouraged on certain days to abstain from certain foods (notably meat) and, in the further past, all animal by-products, while the fasting element was directed to the quantity of food eaten.
Each Friday of the year was a fast and abstinence day of obligation in memory of Christ’s crucifixion. During Lent, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday were also upheld as strict days of observance, with the latter considered a Black Fast day. While these fast and abstinence rules were relaxed over time, the faithful often upheld strict observance during Lent as a means of demonstrating personal piety. This became an issue of considerable significance for the faithful who were eager to uphold this period of reflection and moderation.
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From RTÉ's Today Show, ancient Ireland and our relationship with Lent
As St Patrick’s Day is always in Lent, it introduced a sense of tension between the public holiday celebrations and the moderations of Lent. Added to the complications was the status of the day in the church’s hierarchy of observance. While it was an official saint’s feast day, it was not recognised as a Solemnity, the highest rank of celebration when all rules of fast and abstinence were set aside and meat-eating was permitted.
To counteract the tensions, ingenious folk customs were devised to sanction a sense of license and indulgence for the celebrations of the day. In the later medieval biographies and hagiographies of the saint, Patrick’s relationship with meat-eating during fasting periods is often depicted in tense terms. To soften the tension, folk narratives of Saint Patrick’s Fish were devised. They described how meat is mysteriously transformed into fish if plunged into water thereby giving approval to meat-eating on the saint’s day.
The story is recalled in the 1930s folklore accounts in the National Folklore Schools' Collection in the following account from Co Cork: ‘We hear very seldom to-day of "St Patrick's Fishes". The story runs that the Saint in his early days had a great fondness for flesh meat, but when he reached his active missionary life he decided to satisfy this taste in private.
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From RTÉ Archives, Dr Daithí Ó hÓgáin talks to Thelma Mansfield on Live at 3 in 1988 about the facts and fictions around St Patrick
'After some time and feeling he was doing wrong, he prayed for heavenly guidance. In answer to his prayers an angel appeared to him in a dream and bade him bring forth his hidden store of meat and plunge it into fresh spring water, and immediately the meat was changed into fishes. And many of the ancient Irish dipped meat into spring water before dressing and cooking and they called it when so treated "St Patrick's Fishes" ‘.
At an official level, Church rulings through its conferences of bishops routinely lifted the ban on meat and eggs for St Patrick’s Day with local elevation of the festival to a solemnity. The regulations were advised through the bishops’ Lenten pastorals with the accompanying detailed regulations often printed in newspapers.
The following Lenten pastoral letter from the Most Rev. Dr. James Naughton, Bishop of Killala published in the Western People newspaper on February 25th 1950. ‘There will be no fast or abstinence on the Sundays of Lent, or on St. Patrick's Day. Meat is allowed at dinner on all week-days except Ash Wednesday, Spy Wednesday, Fridays, and Ember Saturday, 4th March. Eggs, butter, milk foods, and condiments, such as lard and dripping are allowed at dinner on every Wednesday and Friday, also on Ember Saturday. Both fast and abstinence cease at 12 o’clock, noon, on Holy Saturday.’
The fish on Fridays custom fell from popularity and was maintained, if at all, by choice rather than obligation
While the fasting and abstinence requirements were lifted for the festival, the meat-fish tension was often still evident in an adherence to fish dishes on St Patrick’s Day, thereby making meat, eggs and fish the typical festive meals. The mix of austerity and licence is evident in the varying festive-day accounts of meals in the Folklore Collection where fish above meat is the choice food.
‘It was a custom to get a big fish for St Patrick’s day’ and ‘lots of fish and potatoes are eaten’, reads an account from Co Galway. Meanwhile, from Co Cork, one contributor reports that ‘Long ago in some places no eggs were eaten on Easter Sunday, but were eaten on Saint Patricks day instead'. In Co Louth, ‘on St. Patrick's Day, the people would have tea, bread and meat’.
The sustained relaxation of the Lenten and Friday regulations at official church level continued with significant amendments made to the rules in 1966 by Pope Paul VI whose apostolic constitution Paenitemini directed that penance could be performed in other ways besides food restrictions. In time, these amendments were incorporated into Canon Law. The fish on Fridays custom fell from popularity and was maintained, if at all, by choice rather than obligation. Meanwhile, the Patrick’s Day indulgence remained fixed to the festival in popular practice.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
