Fun Facts About St. Patrick’s Day

Having learned in the last few years that I am of Irish extraction, I’ve found a renewed interest in St. Patrick’s Day. For this week’s blog post I did a little digging and discovered some things about St. Patrick’s Day that I hadn’t known.

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The real Saint Patrick wasn’t Irish! He was British, born to an aristocratic family around the year 390. He didn’t even practice Christianity until, having been kidnapped and sent to Ireland to live as a shepherd, he experienced a religious conversion, escaped to return to Britain, and was told in a dream to return to Ireland.

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The real Saint Patrick wasn’t even a saint! He was never canonized by a Pope.

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It is said that St. Patrick taught people about the Holy Trinity by using the three leaves of the common clover (or shamrock) to represent the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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Your odds of finding a four-leaf clover are 1 in 10,000.

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The first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the United States was held in Boston in 1737.

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On St. Patrick’s Day, there are over 13 million pints of Guinness sold around the world. Another fun fact: I don’t like Guinness.

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There are 34.7 million Irish-Americans. This is more than seven times the population of Ireland.

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The world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade is held in the Irish village of Dripsey. It is only 100 yards long and stretches between the village’s two pubs.

Not Dripsey.

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Legend has it that wearing green makes a person invisible to leprechauns.

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There are no snakes slithering through the countryside of Ireland and there never were. When we hear that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, perhaps this is what is meant:

From Shoeboxblog.com

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! How do you celebrate?

Until next time,

Amy

You (May Have) Heard it Here First!

Before my husband sends me one more email reminding me that I got the name of one book wrong in my post last week about deserted island fiction and I go berserk, I must make  a correction.

My favorite book by Alexandre Dumas, the one about love and revenge, is The Count of Monte Cristo. It is not The Man in the Iron Mask. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote the post and proofread it three times, but there you have it with my heartfelt apologies. Incidentally, if I had a DVD player on my deserted island, I would also take with me the movie version of The Count of Monte Cristo–the one starring Gerard Depardieu. The movie is many hours long and I would probably be rescued before I could finish watching it.

But now for my news: I am thrilled to announce that I have just signed a contract with Kensington Publishing for my third novel! If you could hear me now, you would hear shouts of joy, dancing, and all manner of celebrating.

For now, all I can tell you is that the story is about a personal chef on the Big Island of Hawaii who stumbles into a household that is not as perfect as it seems. The working title is The House of Hanging Jade, but I fully expect that to change as time goes on. It’s due to the publisher on May 1st, and after that I’ll be starting work on a new project.

The book is scheduled to come out in March, 2016.

In the meantime, I have one guest post to tell you about. Annette Snyder has a blog called “Fifty Authors from Fifty States.” I was lucky enough to land the post all about Hawaii and it went live this past Sunday. As many of you know, I love Hawaii and everything about it, so I had a great time writing the post. I hope you’ll visit Annette’s blog and take a look. The states go in alphabetical order throughout the year, so if there’s any state you want to know more about, take a look at her archives. You’ll find fun information and travel tips from every state and the authors who live there. Or, in my case, an author who wants to live there. Here’s the link:

http://annettesnyder.blogspot.com

I’d like to thank all my blog readers for their kind words, their friendship, and their support. You are the reason I enjoy doing this every week!

And Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Are you celebrating? We made Irish Potatoes over the weekend and we’re having Reubens tonight. I made sure the Swiss cheese was from Ireland. And our milk will be green at dinner, too (I know, I really need to tone it down). Got any other ideas for me?

Until next week,

Amy