St. Patrick's Day- St. Patrick, was born Maewyn (Patricius) Succat in Wales (Scotland ?), in late 300s (373-389) AD. Responsible sources disagree on the date of St. Patricks birth, place of birth, and even which of his first names came first, and when he adopted his second first name.

However NONE disagree that St. Patricks was NOT born in Ireland, and his parents WERE Roman. More specifically St Patricks parents were Calphurnius and Conchessa.

Calphurnius belonged to a Roman family of high rank and held the office of decurio in Britain.

Therefore St.Patrick was born in Britain of Italian heritage.

For those who would wish to quibble, maps from as far back at least as the 2nd century AD identify the Italian penisula as "Italia". So wear your GREEN/White/Red, "The Tricolore" proudly on Wednesday March 17.
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St. Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17, his religious feast day and the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for thousands of years.

On St. Patrick's Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon. Lenten prohibitions against the consumption of meat were waived and people would dance, drink, and feast—on the traditional meal of Irish bacon and cabbage.

The first St. Patrick's Day parade took place not in Ireland, but in the United States.

Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City on March 17, 1762. Along with their music, the parade helped the soldiers to reconnect with their Irish roots, as well as fellow Irishmen serving in the English army. Over the next thirty-five years, Irish patriotism among American immigrants flourished, prompting the rise of so-called "Irish Aid" societies, like the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick and the Hibernian Society.

Each group would hold annual parades featuring bagpipes (which actually first became popular in the Scottish and British armies) and drums. No Irish Need Apply Up until the mid-nineteenth century, most Irish immigrants in America were members of the Protestant middle class.

When the Great Potato Famine hit Ireland in 1845, close to a million poor, uneducated, Catholic Irish began to pour into America to escape starvation. Despised for their religious beliefs and funny accents by the American Protestant majority, the immigrants had trouble finding even menial jobs.

When Irish Americans in the country 's cities took to the streets on St. Patrick's Day to celebrate their heritage, newspapers portrayed them in cartoons as drunk, violent monkeys. However, the Irish soon began to realize that their great numbers endowed them with a political power that had yet to be exploited.

They started to organize, and their voting block, known as the "green machine," became an important swing vote for political hopefuls. Suddenly, annual St. Patrick's Day parades became a show of strength for Irish Americans, as well as a must-attend event for a slew of political candidates.

In 1948, President Truman attended New York City 's St. Patrick's Day parade, a proud moment for the many Irish whose ancestors had to fight stereotypes and racial prejudice to find acceptance in America.

Wearing of the Green Goes Global day, St. Patrick's Day is celebrated by people of all backgrounds in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Although North America is home to the largest productions, St. Patrick's Day has been celebrated in other locations far from Ireland, including Japan, Singapore, and Russia.

In modern-day Ireland, St. Patrick's Day has traditionally been a religious occasion. In fact, up until the 1970s, Irish laws mandated that pubs be closed on March 17.

Beginning in 1995, however, the Irish government began a national campaign to use St. Patrick's Day as an opportunity to drive tourism and showcase Ireland to the rest of the world.

Last year, close to one million people took part in Ireland 's St. Patrick's Festival in Dublin, a multi-day celebration featuring parades, concerts, outdoor theater productions, and fireworks shows.
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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Patrick
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm
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...The most famous Christian teacher produced by Roman Britain was Patrick. He may have been born before Roman rule was severed (from 410). He was the son of a man named Calpurnius, who was not only the deacon of the church but a decurion - a member of the provincial upper classes. Calpurnius' father, Potitus, was a priest.

These names are conventially Roman, of the traditional kind - Calpurnius, a gentilicium that was widespread all over the empire, while Potitus is a standard Roman cognomen, as is Patricius - although much less common and particularly favoured by Christians....Patrick's Father was described by Patrick as a Decurio - a word used frequently in the later Roman empire for a member of a local municipal or territorial council called the senatus or ordo. Each civitas centre of population of varying size with lands around it) had a senate with magistrates called curiales.

Below the civitas level was that of vicus or pagus. Calpornius was then presumably a civilian decurio whose main function in the 4th century seems to have been the raising of taxes of a civilian civitas which included the vicus of Bannavem Taburniae near which he had a substantial estate. Maintenance of status as both a decurio and diaconus and retention of a uillula may imply that, as some contemporaries had done, Calpornius had entered holy orders as a means of tax-avoidance and the preventation of confiscation himself. Equally this could mean he was possibly a territorial magnate and may have retired to an estate from his duties - this would make him a very young retiree though, because Patrick's Confession, written many years later suggests that he would have liked to return to see his family who presumably were still alive.

Quite early in the Roman occupation, a formal education became regarded as a necessity. Tacitus tells how in the winter of AD 79 the Governor Julius Agricola 'trained the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts and expressed a preference for British native ability over the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that in place of a distaste for the Latin language came a passion to command it.'

The Early Education in Roman Britain was reading, writing, arithmetic, the Middle school literature, grammar and maxims. The Upper school focused on rhetorical training.

Patrick knew the Latin Bible well but the family are likely to have spoken British in the home as well as Latin.

Biographers T.F. O'Reilly, Alfred Smyth, Muirchu, Professor Bury consider Patrick's Roman name as Patricius Magonus Sucatus. Later medieval writings gave him at least two brothers, Ruchti and Deacon as well as up to five or six sisters: Tigris, Lupait, Richella, Cinnenum, Liamain and Darerca

Patrick refers to himself as Patricius in his writings - he might have been baptised this -which is a Roman name.

Patrick probably lived in a late Roman villa with at least some of the trappings of this type of dwelling - mosaics, oil lamps and heated floors. The Roman villa by the 430s was in decline and various writers suggest that the house of Calpornius would have been in a similar situation - faded grandeur like the Great Houses of Ireland. To be safe we should suggest a moderate to large sized residence.

Welcome to the saint patrick centre - the world centre telling the story of st patrick, patron saint of ireland
http://www.saintpatrickcentre.com/patrick/index.asp