Are you wearing green today? If not, prepare to be pinched because today is St. Patrick’s Day.

Yes, today is the day of the Irish. It is the day when we Irish people celebrate our ancestry. And because the Irish like to celebrate with ale, people of other ancestries must join in to have a wee bit o’ fun. So, even if you are German, Indian, Japanese, Spanish, Sudanese, French, Italian, Norwegian, Russian or anything else, you can celebrate an Irish tradition with American style.

But before the celebration begins, we must look back to see why today is a holiday o’ the Irish.

St. Patrick’s Day is now a secular holiday, but before it was a Catholic holy day honoring St. Patrick, a missionary who traveled around Ireland to spread Christianity. But St. Patrick wasn’t a saint all his life, he wasn’t actually Irish and his birth name isn’t Patrick. So, what’s the big deal? Here’s the story …

Patrick was born in Wales about AD 385 and his believed name was Maewyn Succat. At age 16, Irish pirates raided his town, kidnapped him and later sold him into slavery in Ireland. As a slave, he worked as a shepherd, where he apparently became closer to God. After six years of slavery, Patrick escaped and went to France, where he studied at a monastery and was converted to Christianity. It was then that he adopted Patrick as his Christian name.

Appointed bishop to the country, Patrick returned to Ireland, where he worked to convert Ireland to Christianity. In this work, sources say Patrick used the three-leafed clover to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is the hand movement Catholics make to symbolize the cross. You often see athletes touch their foreheads, chests and shoulders with their right hands before they compete.

March 17 is dedicated to St. Patrick because he either was born or died on the day. The Catholic church then honored the saint by declaring the day a holy day. Although it is no longer a holy day, the celebration hasn’t ended. In fact, it has grown.

St. Patrick’s Day was first celebrated in the United States in 1737 when Bostonians painted the town green to celebrate. Since then, all of America has turned green.

But St. Patrick’s Day is especially great for college students … it gives us another reason to go out to party. And in light of the men’s basketball team making the Sweet 16 Iowa State students are in for double the fun.

Green is the color for St. Patrick’s Day because it symbolizes the color of spring, Ireland and the shamrock. But for college students, it also means green beer. I’m sure that the local drinking establishments, or should I say pubs, will offer their patrons a little green ale.

And to continue the color tradition, we can celebrate Thursday with red beer, since our Iowa State Cyclones will be dashing past UCLA in that cardinal red and gold. Even if you don’t like tomato, add a little red to your ale to show your support for the team.

Besides opening your throat for some beverages, there are other ways to celebrate the green today and the red on Thursday.

For today, eat some Lucky Charms. Although breakfast has past, remember you are a college student. College students eat cereal for any meal of the day, especially in the residence halls. With those red hearts, green clovers, yellow stars, blue diamonds and purple horseshoes, you can’t go wrong.

If cereal isn’t your cup of tea, perhaps you can make some green eggs and ham. See, even Dr. Seuss encourages us to celebrate the Irish holiday.

Other green food ideas for the day are green beans, lettuce, green-colored pasta and those green snowballs next to the ho-hos in the grocery store.

And for Thursday, there are several ways you can root for your Cyclones by being loyal to the color red. Of course, you can walk around campus sporting Cyclone sweatshirts. But you can also wear bright red lipstick or nail polish and take lecture notes with a red pen.

You can also buy those face decals of the Cyclone mascot and stick those on your face all day. Basically, the Sweet 16 is an excellent opportunity for our Cyclones to show off their basketball skills, but it is a great time for all of us to get crazy.

Thursday is the day for the Cyclones, but today is the day for the Irish. So, today take a walk down Leprechaun Lane with those Lucky Charms and yell “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” And on Thursday get people to kiss you because you are a Cyclone.

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Erin Payne is a junior in journalism and mass communication and political science from Rock Rapids.