St. Paddy’s Day Presents?

Until this year, I had never heard of St. Patrick’s Day presents.  On Monday, my co-worker Lauren started talking about her in-law’s St. Patrick’s Day traditions, which include some presents.  And, I noticed a few blogs today talking about leprechauns visiting and leaving behind presents.  Where have I been, especially since I have Irish ancestry?  I so want in on this holiday tradition!

Also, I have a St. Patrick’s Day fact for you just in case you didn’t know.  Yesterday, I put my Facebook status as, “Jennifer Elyse Blaser says, ‘Happy St. Paddy’s Day!’”  I showed this to my co-worker Erin because someone had commented about my correct use of punctuation, and since I’m a tech writer, I was kind of proud of myself and wanted to show it off. Erin proceeded to ask, “Isn’t it St. Patty’s Day with Ts?”

I was taken aback, not because I thought she was being rude, but because I had never heard of St. Patrick’s Day being shortened to St. Patty’s Day.  I told her I had always seen it with Ds.  Erin and a couple of other co-workers thought Erin’s reasoning was well-founded because Patty is short for Patrick.  I’ll admit I thought her reasoning was well-founded too; I just always thought the reason for the Ds was because it was more masculine.  I decided to check it out.  St. Patrick’s Day is shortened to St. Paddy’s Day because Paddy is actually short for Padraig (pronounced Pah drig), which is the Irish Gaelic form of Patrick.

Update: Poll closed.