Ireland Trips

St. Patrick’s Day is the national holiday of Ireland that celebrates one of the patron saints of Ireland, St. Patrick. The holiday is commonly celebrated on March 17th, the anniversary of St. Patrick’s death in the 5th century. The day falls during the Christian season of Lent, so Irish families traditionally would attend church in the morning and then celebrate the holiday in the afternoon. The usual Lenten restrictions were waived for this day, and part of the celebrations included the traditional Irish meal of bacon and cabbage.

Originally, St. Patrick’s Blue was the color affiliated with St. Patrick. However, St. Patrick used a green shamrock to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity to the pre-Christian Irish. It was also considered a sign of Irish nationalism or loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church to wear a shamrock on one’s clothing. It is believed that for these reasons the official color shifted from blue to green sometime around the 1750s.

Interestingly, the first St. Patrick’s day parade actually took place in the United States, when Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through the streets of New York City on the 17th of March, 1762.

After the great influx of Irish immigrants to the United States following the Great Potato Famine of 1845, the massive amount of Irish Americans soon realized the political power that their population afforded them, and began organizing and created the voting block that became known as “the green machine”. Annual St. Patrick’s Day parades became powerful exhibitions of strength of Irish Americans, and all political candidates would attend. In 1948, many Irish Americans felt vindicated after years of racial prejudice when President Harry S. Truman was in attendance at the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City.

In contrast to the way St. Patrick’s Day is commonly celebrated in the United States, it was actually mainly a religious holiday in Ireland up until recent times. In fact, until the 1970s, all pubs in Ireland had to be closed on St. Patrick’s Day in observance of the holiday. However, in 1995 the Irish Government realized the potential of the holiday, and launched a campaign to use St. Patrick’s Day to attract tourism. Last year alone, nearly one million people attended St. Patrick’s festival in Dublin. The multi-day event features parades, concerts, and even fireworks displays.

Celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day are by no means restricted to Ireland and the United States. Popular celebrations of the holiday commonly occur in such remote places as Japan, Russia, Singapore and more.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under St. Patrick's Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.