Featured image from Madoka Magica online game.
Our featured image is two years old, but, hey, finding St. Patrick’s Day-themed magical girl art is hard.
So, anyway, happy St. Patrick’s Day. I’m Catholic, and now is the season of Lent, which is an ancient practice of fasting for forty days prior to the celebration of Easter, which lasts for fifty days. This practice of fasting before feasts is a tradition of ours, as it makes the feasts grander.
Of course, over the centuries, a lot of holidays have have accrued, some of them during the Lenten season. I spent a couple of years in seminary, and we used to complain that it seemed we had more big parties during Lent than any other time of year.
St. Patrick’s Day is during Lent, and though it’s not a big celebration everywhere, it is here in the United States, so when it falls on Friday, a lot of bishops dispense with the Friday Lenten practice of abstention from meat because, in America, eating corned beef has become part of the St. Patrick’s Day tradition even though that is not a traditional Irish dish. I have not looked this up to confirm it, but legend has it that the association of corned beef, pickled cabbage, and St. Paddy’s comes from the meals Irish emigrants ate on ships while traveling to America.
I’d heard no word on the origin of green beer. However, with the wonders of modern technology, I turn to The Daily Meal, which has an article on the subject. Apparently, the exact origin is unclear, though it’s almost certainly an American invention from sometime in the beginning of the the twentieth century.
In my own diocese, there is no dispensation from today’s Lenten abstention, but it so happens that later in the day I will, for entirely legitimate reasons, be in the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, where there is. So tonight, I’m having beef, and maybe a Guinness, and perhaps a drop of Irish whiskey.
Links between St. Patrick’s Day and magical girls are few for obvious reasons, but a Puella Magi Madoka Magica online game celebrated this holiday a couple of years back, and Crunchyroll produced a set of images from the occasion, a couple of which I’ve swiped for this post.
The magical girls in Madoka could probably use a shot or two of Irish whiskey. Then maybe they’d be less mopey.
