Healthy News & Views

Every year on March 17th, many people in the world celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by wearing green clothing, drinking green beer, eating traditional Irish food, and attending parades and festivities.

St. Patrick’s Day,March 17th, is the anniversary of St. Patrick’s death in the fifth century, and has been a religious holiday for over 1,000 years. Today, however, St. Patrick’s Day has become a day to party- without much thought of the life of the saint and his religious beliefs.

St. Patrick was born to wealthy parents in Britain. His father was a Christian deacon, though the family was not particularly religious.  Being a deacon was purely for saving money, as the family gained tax incentives from the position.  At the age of 16, St. Patrick was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland to be a slave.

He lived in County Mayo, Ireland for six years slaving as a shepherd. Isolated and lonely, St. Patrick took solace in his belief in God and Christianity. After six years, St. Patrick had a dream in which God told him to leave Ireland. St. Patrick escaped back to Britain where he had another dream where he was told to return to Ireland as a missionary.

After years of religious training, St. Patrick returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish and minister to Christians in Ireland. St. Patrick used native Irish traditions to superimpose Christianity with pagan beliefs. The sun, an Irish symbol, was used on the cross to create the Celtic cross. Bonfires were used at Easter because fire was used in pagan rituals.

 The shamrock was a sacred plant that symbolized the rebirth of spring. Legend says that St. Patrick would hold up the shamrock and ask, “Is it one leaf or three?” “It is both one leaf and three leaves,” the Irish followers would reply. So, one God in three persons as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was explained using the native and traditional Irish symbol of the shamrock.

 A shamrock can also be used to symbolize Chiropractic. According to Ralph W. Stephenson, D.C., author of The Chiropractic Textbook, chiropractic is a philosophy, science, and art of things natural, and a system of adjusting the spinal column, by hand only, for the correction of the cause of dis-ease.  Chiropractic is the whole shamrock or one leaf, and the three leaves are the philosophy, science, and art of chiropractic.

So, on St. Patrick’s Day, when you see a shamrock, don’t just think of green beer or corned beef and cabbage.  Think about your Chiropractic care and celebrate with an adjustment for a healthy and natural life! 

Get green. Get healthy. Get Chiropractic!

Attribution 
St. Patrick's Day Child:By Billy Hathorn (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons