Happy St. Patrick’s Day! If you don’t live under the Blarney Stone, you already know that March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day. Also affectionately known as St. Paddy’s Day, it’s the one day each year when everyone can call themselves Irish—if not by birth, then by spirit. If you live under the Blarney Stone, you’re in luck! We bet you can share a thing or two about how a religious festival commemorating the famous Irish patron saint who brought Christianity to Ireland became a nearly worldwide celebration, usually involving plenty of green beer and whiskey shooters.
St. Patrick’s Day – March 17 is celebrated in more countries than any other single-day national festival worldwide, largely due to America’s enthusiasm for what many consider a holiday, even though it’s not an official holiday in the US.
Parades are the heartbeat of St. Patrick’s Day festivities in America. This isn’t surprising, as the first parade in honor of St. Patrick took place not in Ireland, but in America in 1601, in what is now St. Augustine, Florida. And the first real St. Patrick’s Day parade in America also took place in 1737, although it was a walk in the middle of a street by some Irish Protestants in Boston in honor of their homeland’s patron saint.
The first St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City took place in 1762, 14 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and was organized by Irish soldiers serving in the British colonies. Today, the world’s largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration is the annual parade in New York City, where over two million spectators line the parade route, all of whom claim to be Irish, at least for that day.
