Jackson Free Press

People across the world celebrate St. Patrick's Day on March 17 with parades, festivals and a variety of revelry, but who exactly is Saint Patrick?

St. Patrick was a Catholic minister who was probably born in Scotland around 387 A.D., during the reign of the Roman Empire. Irish pirates kidnapped him as a teenager and sold him into slavery in their country, where he tended to his master's flocks for about six years. He wrote in his memoir, "Confessio," that he turned to Catholicism for comfort during that time.

At age 20, he escaped captivity after hearing a voice in a dream, telling him to go to the coast. There, he found a group of sailors who agreed to take him back to Britain.

In "Confessio," Patrick wrote that he later had a dream in which someone named Victoricus gave him a letter called "The Voice of the Irish." As he read the letter, he heard voices of Irishmen pleading for him to return to their country.

Afterward, he began studying to become a priest. The Roman Catholic Church ordained Patrick as a bishop and sent him to Ireland to preach the gospel in 433 A.D. While there are many myths about his work in the Irish isles, we do know that he converted thousands of druids to Christianity and built churches around the country. He died on March 17, possibly around 461 A.D., in Saul, Ireland, where he had founded the country's first church.

Though Irish people have long celebrated his legacy on March 17, the first recorded instance of a St. Patrick's Day parade was in New York City in 1762, when Irish soldiers in the English military marched through the city.

Jackson's own Hal's St. Paddy's Parade & Festival (formerly known as the Mal's St. Paddy's Parade & Festival) began in 1983 when Malcolm White, now the current Mississippi Arts Commission executive director, marched through downtown with a couple hundred other Jackson residents. White told the Jackson Free Press that festivals and cultural celebrations such as Mardi Gras inspired him to create something similar but also unique to Jackson.

This year's Hal's St. Paddy's Parade & Festival is Saturday, March 17. For more information, read the cover story jfp.ms/artfullyalive35. To see what's happening at the festival, visit jfp.ms/stpaddysmusic2018, and for information on how local businesses are celebrating, visit jfp.ms/stpaddysroundup2018.