Irish, Irish at Heart Celebrate St. Patrick`s Day

Some communities, like the US city of Chicago dye rivers or streams green in honor of St. Patrick’s day. File Photo.

St Patrick's Day is celebrated Tuesday by the Irish and Irish at heart in big cities and small towns all around the world.

Saint Patrick's Day, or casually St. Paddy's Day or Paddy's Day, is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on March 17.

The day is the national holiday of Ireland. In the past, Saint Patrick's Day was celebrated as a religious holiday.

It was only in the mid-1990s that the Irish government began a campaign to use Saint Patrick's Day to showcase Ireland and its culture.

In many parts of North America, Britain, and Australia, expatriate Irish and ever-growing crowds of people with no Irish connections but who may proclaim themselves "Irish for a day," both Christians and non-Christians, also observe St. Patrick's Day. Around the world the day has become a time for fun. Most celebrate the secular version of the holiday by wearing green, eating Irish food and/or green foods, imbibing Irish drink (such as Irish stout, Irish Whiskey or Irish Cream), performing Irish music and songs, attending parades, and organizing activities for kids such as crafts, coloring and games. Some communities even go so far as to dye rivers or streams green.

The St. Patrick's Day parade was first held in Boston in 1761, organized by the Charitable Society.

Today, the New York parade is the largest, typically drawing two million spectators and 150,000 marchers. The predominantly French-speaking Canadian city of Montreal, in the province of Québec has the longest continually running Saint Patrick's day parade in North America, since 1824.

Ireland's cities all hold their own parades and festivals, including Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford. The St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin is part of a five-day festival.

The largest parade in Dublin, with its theme of "The Sky's the Limit", is set to involve more than 2,000 performers including street theatre companies and marching bands from the US, Canada, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Ireland.

Saint Patrick is believed to have been born in the late fourth century. He spent six years of slavery in Ireland until he escaped and undertook religious training abroad.

St. Patrick's Blue, not green, was the color long-associated with St. Patrick. Green, the color most widely associated with Ireland, with Irish people, and with St. Patrick's Day in modern times, may have gained its prominence through the phrase "the wearing of the green" meaning to wear a shamrock on one's clothing. At many times in Irish history, to do so was seen as a sign of Irish nationalism or loyalty to the Roman Catholic faith. St. Patrick used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pre-Christian Irish.

 

 

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