Patron Saints ?

[foxyloxley]

Well it's 23rd April, and that makes it St George's day here in the UK.
Yet, once again, we are doing absolutely zilch to 'celebrate'.

Before you ask WHAT is there to celebrate, I have just three words to say :

St PATRICK'S DAY ...........................

So :
first : Who is YOUR patron saint ?
Do you have a national day / holiday ?
Why is Patrick the only one to get the proper treatment ?

ME WANTS A DAY OFF TO GET PLASTERED, AND FORGET ABOUT THE GREAT BRITISH TRADITION OF JUST AGREEING TO LET JOHNNY FOREIGNER HAVE THEIR DAY .................

[/RANT]

Gawd but I NEED a
bye for a while

[Striek]

My patron saint? Nelson Mandela. The best testament to selfless devotion the modern world has ever seen. He should have been canonized decades ago.

Our national day? Canada day, July 1st. Just like most countries, we spend millions of dollars on fireworks, and then, as Apu said it best, we celebrate the birth of our country by blowing up a small part of it.

We also have Victoria day on May 24th, the de facto celebration of the Queen's birthday. We just always celebrate it on May 24th rather than changing the holiday for every queen or king. But nobody really celebrates it for the Queen any more. It's more of a celebration of the beginning of summer now. We light more fireworks, throw huge lawn parties and barbeques, invite everyone we know and the whole neighbourhood, and get wasted. So it's kind of like a whole holiday for nothing but drinking and blowing **** up. The day off is always on a Monday so we get a long weekend out of it too.

As for St. Patrick's day, I think it's so popular because a) there is no other holiday that time of year, and b) most holidays are meant for family, and this one is meant for friends. Everybody is in a friendly mood on St. Patrick's day. Even strangers are new best friends. It's a celebration of Irish culture here too. We drink green beer and green vodka (well, just beer and vodka with green food colouring) and go on about how much we love the Irish. It's really a celebration of friendship.

[Negative]

Talking about Patron Saints... I've heard all kinds of analyses on how and why the new pope picked Benedictus as his papal name (because he liked the policies of the previous Benedictus, blablabla...). Ratzinger's birthday is on April 16, April 16 has Benedict Joseph Labre as Patron Saint (amongst others), Ratzinger's first name is Joseph... there

[foxyloxley]

Isn't Undie's birthday on the 16th April too

Pope Undie's has a ring to it wouldn't you say ........

[Egaladeist]

Hi foxyloxley,

Well... Striek pretty much covered the traditional holidays other than the obvious ones every one celebrates in the west...

but you asked about patron saints...if I had one it would be Saint Ignatius...who was the third bishop of the christian church and the founder/originator and the one to coin the phrase "catholic church"...he was thrown to the lions in 107 AD...no...I'm not catholic...but you did ask for a patron saint and as far as I know only catholics have them !

My personal favorite though is Saint Ignoramus the patron saint of lawyers !

Dictionary.com

[From New Latin ignrmus, a grand jury's endorsement upon a bill of indictment when evidence is deemed insufficient to send the case to a trial jury, from Latin, we do not know, first person pl. present tense of ignrre, to be ignorant. See ignore.]

Eg

[Und3ertak3r]

Nah... not Pope Undies..

Saint's Undies.... hmm St. Undies... The Patron Saint of Malware Removal

Bless you Childeren!

/Goes off to pontificate for an hour or so...