IN 1680, THE English traveller Thomas Dineley recorded his observations of Ireland in a journal. This is what he had to say about what is now our de facto national holiday:

The 17th day of March yearly is St Patricks, an immoveable feast, when ye Irish of all stations and conditions wear crosses in their hatts, some of pins, some of green ribbon, and the vulgar superstitiously wear shamroges (sic), three leaved grass, which they likewise eat (they say) to cause a sweet breath. The common people and servants also demand their Patricks groat of their masters, which they go expressly to town (though half a dozen miles off) to spend, where sometimes it amounts to a piece of eight… and very few of the zealous are found sober at night.

Does any of this sound familiar?

One might point out the unfamiliar. After all, in 2012 it’s highly unlikely that Irish employers will give their employees a gratuity purely for the sake of a good time. And while the prospect of shamrocks producing ‘a sweet breath’ may be desirable, we can safely write that one off.

But at least one of Dineley’s observations still holds true; should anyone ever take umbrage at the perennial stereotype of the drunken Irish, a quick venture into any Irish town or city around closing time on March 17 might suggest to him or her that it contains at least a sliver of truth.

Having said that, Dinely didn’t record what March 17 actually meant when he came across it. And we could still ask ourselves that question: St Patrick’s Day does seem a rather meaningless holiday. Other national holidays don’t seem to have this problem. The US Fourth of July, for instance, is inextricably linked to the American Revolution, and to principles of freedom and liberty that many Americans will argue are fundamental to their culture; and while we might raise an eyebrow at the extent to which the US actually lives up to these ideals, they give the Fourth of July a very specific resonance.

The actual meaning of St Patrick’s Day might be vague, but this has allowed it to be loaded with a bewildering range of meanings over the centuries.

‘In 1960s New York, St Patrick’s Day was celebrated by the Loyal Yiddish Sons of Erin’

In 1737 Protestant emigrants in Boston used a gathering on 17 March as the pretext for setting up a charity. In the 1760s the first parades took place in New York, seemingly thanks to Irish troops serving there. These became a regular fixture of 17 March in New York throughout the nineteenth century; the parades were a focal point for newly arrived strangers in a strange land, and were successfully exported back to the mother country, and to wherever else the Irish pitched up.

On the other side of the Atlantic, at the turn of the nineteenth century the British authorities in Ireland patronised St Patrick’s Day on the grounds that it was far less provocative that to more sectarian anniversaries like that of the battle of the Boyne; but by the second half of the century the British suspected the celebration of St Patrick’s Day to be little more than a front for militant nationalists like the Fenians. The wheel, in this case, had turned.

The list could go on and on. After all, life is more interesting for the fact that, back in the 1960s and back in New York, St Patrick’s Day was being celebrated by no less a group than the Loyal Yiddish Sons of Erin.

And we could extend our list of celebrations across the world; even to the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, where one legacy of Irish planters and servants is that it remains the only other country in the world where 17 March is a national holiday. It’s a funny world we live in.

In 1680 Thomas Dineley encountered, on 17 March, a slice of Irish popular culture whose origins remain obscure, but which, in the centuries since then, has seemed to have had the potential to mean all things to all men (and, lest we forget, quite a few women). Does St Patrick’s Day mean anything today?

To ask that question is not to indulge in a tiresome pseudo-intellectual debate about ‘what it means to be Irish’. Nor is it to assume that St Patrick’s Day must have a meaning. In 2012 many of the issues that energised 17 March in the past have faded away; will they be replaced with new ones?

Then again, given the sorry condition we find ourselves at this moment in time, it might be the case that life is too short for such agonising. We could just need a blow-out; and I’d settle for that.

John Gibney works on the award-winning Historical Walking Tours of Dublin: www.historicalinsights.ie.