It’s March 17, so there’s a very good chance you awoke this morning feeling at least a wee bit Irish.

Millions of people do on St. Patrick’s Day. You might be French or Greek, Swedish or Italian, but no matter. Many of you have been getting more Irish by the hour, eagerly awaiting the end of your work day when you can throw on the odd piece of green clothing, rinse off last year’s “Kiss Me I’m Irish” button, and shed your winter blues in a night of unbridled good cheer.

No other day offers such a license for raucous fun on a national scale. New Year’s celebrations are often too champagne-elegant; Christmas, Hannukah, Thanksgiving and July 4th are all too family-centered. Only St. Patrick’s Day invites people from all nationalities to hoist the grog until the whole gang is bawling out an unabashedly weepy rendition of “Danny Boy” and dreaming of the Old Sod.

Yet if you were to poll the crowd down at the local pub tonight — ask them about the man in whose name they are celebrating so vigorously — most would probably conjure up a description more befitting the Lucky Charms leprechaun than the patron saint of Ireland. There would be vague references to snakes, of course, which has a “Wild Kingdom” appeal that people can relate to.

In my three-week ramble around Ireland years ago, in fact, I didn’t see a single snake. From that I was left to conclude that either St. Patrick really did chase them all from that boggy island or there were never any snakes there to begin with. We’ll never know for sure, considering the amazing snake-wrangling feat would have occurred some 1,500 years ago, which was before CNN.

Most of St. Patrick’s incredibly influential life is, in fact, a curious blend of fact and fancy. In one musty book of Irish history, I read that St. Patrick drove out a “pest of snakes,” although the author didn’t explain how many snakes constitute a “pest.” Another author suggested it was “the serpent of paganism” that Patrick banished, which seems more plausible than the image of the Archbishop of Armagh chasing after a herd of wriggling vipers with his wooden staff.

What we do know of St. Patrick, however, is that he was most definitely born in Scotland, although it might have been Wales, sometime around A.D. 387, on either March 8 or March 9, which adds up to March 17. His father was a Roman named Calpurnius, his mother a wise woman named Conchessa. Patrick studied Latin scripture until he was 16, when he was kidnapped and carried to Ireland as the slave of a druid named Milchu. Patrick tended sheep in the mountains for six years before escaping to the coast, where he hopped a boat for the continent and became a priest. After being sent back to Ireland by Pope Celestine, the apostle to Erin was imprisoned, tortured, and variously persecuted while converting the pagan population to Christianity. One of Ireland’s greatest martyrs, St. Patrick died a very old man in A.D. 493, or thereabouts.

Funny, isn’t it, that we now honor this courageous saint, this man of piety, humility and unflinching religious conviction, by donning shamrock-festooned paper hats, singing bawdy songs and guzzling green beer? How many other saints can claim so festive a legacy? While we’re at it, though, we’d do well to heed the old Irish toast:

St. Patrick was a gentleman

Who through strategy and stealth

Drove all the snakes from Ireland

Here’s toasting to his health.

But not too many toastings

Lest you lose yourself and then

Forget the good St. Patrick

And see all those snakes again