Happy St Patrick's Day! here's some history!

Happy St Patrick's Day! I hope everyone is enjoying their day celebrating being Irish or pretending that they're Irish if they aren't. as I dressed my daughter for school this morning, I got to wondering where the custom of pinching people who aren't wearing green came from. nowadays, it seems to be a suit worthy action but I wondered where it came from. I found a lot of different explanations but some good info came from the American Greetings website. yeah the card site. http://www.americangreetings.com/events/st-patricks-day.pd you can click here to find out but...if you are too busy drinking green beer, I'll give you the quick version. the pinching thing came from America, go figure. apparently, wearing green is an American tradition because green is considered UNLUCKY in Ireland. it goes back to when Ireland was not free and their flag was all green. (HISTORY!!!LA!!!!!) anyway, American's started wearing green and schoolchildren, acting like leprechauns, pinched those who weren't wearing green. apparently the pinch was to remind the fashion unfortunates that you couldn't be protected from the mischief of leprechauns if you weren't wearing green. that bit of info wasn't on the American Greetings site. I read it somewhere else. probably a wiki site so it might be sketchy. anyway, that's where the pinching came from. actually, most of the traditions we embrace to celebrate St Patrick's Day are American, including the beer part. oh well, it's a fun day and you get to learn a bit about history, even if we made it up.