Saint Patrick's Day (Irish: Lá ’le Pádraig or Lá Fhéile Pádraig), colloquially St. Paddy's Day or simply Paddy's Day, is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick (circa AD 385–461), one of the patron saints of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on March 17.
The day is the national holiday of Ireland. It is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland and a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland and Montserrat. In Canada, Great Britain, Australia, the United States, and New Zealand, it is widely celebrated but is not an official holiday.
St. Patrick's feast day was placed on the universal liturgical calendar in the Catholic Church due to the influence of the Waterford-born Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding in the early part of the 17th century, although the feast day was celebrated in the local Irish church from a much earlier date. St. Patrick's Day is a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. The feast day usually falls during Lent; if it falls on a Friday of Lent (unless it is Good Friday), the obligation to abstain from eating meat can be lifted by the local bishop. The church calendar avoids the observance of saints' feasts during certain solemnities, moving the saint's day to a time outside those periods. St. Patricks Day is very occasionally affected by this requirement. Thus when March 17 falls during Holy Week, as in 1940 when St. Patrick's Day was observed on April 3 in order to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and again in 2008, having been observed on 15 March.
Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated worldwide by the those of Irish descent and increasingly by non-Irish people (usually in New Zealand, Australia, and North America). Celebrations are generally themed around all things Irish and, by association, the colour green. Both Christians and non-Christians 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) and attending parades.
The world's first St. Patrick's Day parade was held in Boston in 1761, organized by the Charitable Society. The first recorded parade was New York City's celebration which began on 18 March 1762 when Irish soldiers in the English military marched through the city with their music. 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; The city's flag has the Irish emblem, the shamrock, in one of its corners. Ireland's cities all hold their own parades and festivals, including Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford. Parades also take place in other Irish towns and villages. The St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin, Ireland is part of a five-day festival; over 500,000 people attended the 2006 parade.
Other large parades include those in Savannah, Georgia , Milwaukee, Wisconsin, New London, Wisconsin (which changes its name to New Dublin the week of St. Patrick's Day) , Dallas, Cleveland, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Jackson, Mississippi, Boston, Buffalo, Rochester, Houston, Chicago, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Rolla, Missouri, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Baton Rouge, Pittsburgh, Denver, St. Paul, Sacramento, San Francisco, Scranton, Seattle, Butte, Staten Island, New York, Bayonne, New Jersey, Detroit, Syracuse, Albany, Newport, Holyoke, MA, New Haven, CT, Norfolk, VA,,Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Columbus, and throughout much of the Western world. The parade held in Sydney, Australia, is recorded as being the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.
As well as being a celebration of Irish culture, Saint Patrick's Day is a Christian festival celebrated in the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, and some other denominations. The day almost always falls in the season of Lent. Some bishops will grant an indult, or release, from the Friday no-meat observance when St. Patrick's Day falls on a Friday; this is sometimes colloquially known as a "corned-beef indult". When 17 March falls on a Sunday, church calendars (though rarely secular ones) move Saint Patrick's Day to the following Monday—and when the 17th falls during Holy Week (very rarely), the observance will be moved to the next available date or, exceptionally, before holy week. The public holiday in Ireland does not move and always remains at 17 March, being fixed on the State calendar.
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" also celebrate St. Patrick's Day, usually with the consumption of traditionally Irish alcoholic beverages (beer and stout, such as Murphy's, Beamish, Smithwicks, Harp, or Guinness; Irish whiskey; Irish coffee; or Baileys Irish Cream) and by wearing green-coloured clothing.
2007 marked the first annual St. Patrick's Day parade and festival in the Scottish city of Glasgow.
In North American communities with large populations of persons of Italian descent, St. Patrick's Day celebrations are often combined with those of Saint Joseph's Day, which takes place on March 19, two days after St. Patrick's.
St. Patrick's Blue, not green, was the colour long-associated with St. Patrick. Green, the colour 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. The wearing of and display of shamrocks and shamrock-inspired designs have become a ubiquitous feature of the saint's holiday. The change to Ireland's association with green rather than blue probably began around the 1750's.
Some Protestants have begun wearing orange on St. Patrick's Day as a mark of defiance. This relatively new tradition has its roots in William of Orange (William III), the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, who defeated King James II, a Roman Catholic, in the Battle of the Boyne near Dublin. William's victory would ensure Protestant military dominance on the island and has been a source of tension ever since. Although the "Orange" in William's name actually referred to a province in southern France, the colour reference of orange for Protestants stuck. This is why orange now appears in the Irish flag - to symbolize the Protestant minority in Ireland. The first group to take part in the tradition of wearing orange on St. Patrick's Day appears to have been the Orange Institution, a Protestant fraternal organization more commonly known as the Orange Order. Some members of the order wore orange in various parades on St. Patrick's Day as a mark of defiance.
Irish Society of Boston organized what was the first Saint Patrick's Day Parade in the colonies on 17 March 1737. The first celebration of Saint Patrick's Day in New York City was held at the Crown and Thistle Tavern in 1756, and New York's first Saint Patrick's Day Parade was held on 17 March 1762 by Irish soldiers in the British Army. In 1780, General George Washington, who commanded soldiers of Irish descent in the Continental Army, allowed his troops a holiday on 17 March “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence." This event became known as The St. Patrick's Day Encampment of 1780. Today, Saint Patrick's Day is widely celebrated in America by Irish and non-Irish alike.
Americans celebrate the holiday by wearing green clothing. Many people, regardless of ethnic background, wear green-coloured clothing and items. Traditionally, those who are caught not wearing green are pinched.
Some cities paint the traffic stripe of their parade routes green. Chicago dyes its river green and has done so since 1961 when sewer workers used green dye to check for sewer discharges and got the idea to turn the river green for St. Patrick's Day. Indianapolis also dyes its main canal green. Savannah dyes its downtown city fountains green. Missouri University of Science and Technology - St Pat's Board Alumni paint 12 city blocks kelly green with mops before the annual parade. In Jamestown, New York, the Chadakoin River (a small tributary that connects Conewango Creek with its source at Chautauqua Lake) is dyed green each year.
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