St. Patrick's Day

How is the St. Patrick's day celebrated?

As a part of the celebration, most Irish people would wear shamrocks on their lapels, or caps, on St. Patrick's Day. Most children would wear small tricolored (green, white and orange) badges. The young girls would traditionally wear green ribbons in their hair (of which to this day many still do).

A three-leafed Shamrock clover was used by St. Patrick to represent the trinity - like Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This was derived from the fact that the shamrock is considered lucky by all Irish people. 

The shamrock was originally used by the Irish as a mark of nationalism when the English invaded the Celtics. Thus the shamrock has a lot of reverence in Ireland. Leprechuans, or the Irish fairy people, have also become associated with the St. Patrick's festival.  

In Ireland itself, St. Patrick's Day was traditionally a purely religious holiday. In fact, until the mid-1970's, Irish law dictated that all pubs and bars were to be closed – NO exceptions. However, by 1995 the Irish government began to use St. Patrick's Day as a catalyst for tourism as people from all over the world clamored for all things Irish. 

In homes throughout the world, St. Patrick's Day is celebrated with no alcoholic excess. Many Irish Catholic families celebrate be devoting the day to prayer. Most families will cook the traditional Irish feast of corned beef (also known as Irish bacon), cabbage, and soda bread.  

Many of these families will then end the night with some coffee with Irish crème and a chocolate pie, or cake, liberally saturated with mint flavoring. These traditions have been passed from generation to generation and are revered as much as, if not more, than the alcoholic debauchery that has become known so well. 

In more recent times, the St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Dublin have now been extended to a week-long event called the St. Patrick's Festival. During the festival they have a spectacular fireworks display (called Skyfest), open-air music, street theaters and, of course, the traditional parade. In 2004 over one million people attended the celebrations. The celebration has continued to grow each year.

St. Patrick's Day is now celebrated worldwide by the Irish and all of us of Irish descent. A major parade takes place in Dublin and throughout most of the other Irish towns and villages. The four largest parades of recent years have been held in Dublin, New York, Chicago and Birmingham England.  

St. Patrick's Day was first celebrated in New York City on March 17, 1762. Irish soldiers, serving in the British Army in the American Colonies, marched through the streets of New York to celebrate their Irish homeland from which they had not seen in years. St. Patrick's Cathedral now stands in Manhattan as a majestic reminder of the history of the Irish people in New York City.

As America grew the Irish population grew with it. Throughout most of the later part of 18th century, Irish Aid societies like the “Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick” held annual parades celebrating St. Patrick's Day. These parades included bagpipes and drums. At the time bagpipes were unknowingly though to be more of a Scottish custom than Irish.

Almost a million poor Irishmen streamed into America during the Great Potato Famine of 1845. These new immigrants were Catholic and often uneducated, unlike their middle-class Protestant predecessors. It became very difficult for them to find work and they were ridiculed both in public and in the press as those “drunken monkeys with undecipherable accents”. During this period of time the St. Patrick's Day celebrations grew decidedly more subdued with reason.

But by the early 20th century the Irish population, in the United States, came to realize that they were very large in numbers and thus had immense voting power. They started courting public opinion and became quite the political machine. The when Harry S. Truman attended the New York City St. Patrick's Day parade in 1948 many Irish-Americans finally knew they were an accepted part of American culture!

Although, here in the U.S. one of the fastest growing celebrations takes place every year in Savannah, Ga. Other parades take place in London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and all across the Americas. In the United States, St. Patrick's Day would not be St. Patrick's Day unless the Chicago River was dyed green.  

St. Paddy's Day currently has little religious or historical significance. Established, here in the United States in Boston in 1737, it has essentially become a time to put on a "Kiss Me I'm Irish" button. Drink the green beer and parade drunken through the streets singing a mangled version of "Danny Boy". Thus celebrating one's real, or imagined, Irish ancestry.

So in a nutshell, it can be seen that the legends revolving around St Patrick have been inseparably combined with the facts. The day invariably evokes the "I am Irish" sentiments along with patronizing St. Patrick for his services towards Ireland. Together they have helped us know more about the Saint and the spirit behind the celebration of the day. 

So now you know!

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