St. Patrick's Day

I. Précis

This project is made especially for those who love Ireland. I myself like it and this is why I have chosen this subject. I have always been interested in the Irish culture, in the way that people live and most of all in their “St. Patrick’s Day”.

Saint Patrick’s Day (colloquially “St. Paddy’s Day”) is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick, one of the patron saints of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on 17th of March. 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. It is also a public holiday in Montserrat. In Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and the United States it is widely celebrated but is not an official holiday.

I have first heard about this festive day from a friend who lives in Ireland. He sent me some photos taken by him at the parade and I was amazed about all those “green things” around. Then I started to put many questions: Who was Saint Patrick? Why is he celebrated by the Irish? What exactly are people doing? In order to quench my thirst for knowledge, I have made an in-depth study about several aspects related to Saint Patrick.

But he still remains a mystery in certain aspects, for example: Did St. Patrick really rid Ireland of snakes?

II. Introduction

Millions of people decked out in vibrant green throng city streets the world over. Pipers skirl out martial tunes. Dancers jig and reel with steps that would take your breath away. Rivers and beer are dyed green. Traffic grinds to an official halt. Happy St Patrick's Day. An event that started out as a defiant protest against anti-Irish bigotry in the United States has evolved into a global demonstration of ethnic pride. It is a day when everyone wants to be Irish.

In every sense, St Patrick's Day is a virtual mirror of Irish social evolution. This year, for example, there will be a massive parade in London; an affirmation of a pronounced Irish identity in a place where in the all too recent past it was easier to keep your head down. It is tempting to compare this with the U.S. situation where such parades have been the norm now for generations. But such a comparison would be facile. There was a time too when the Irish in America endured their share of hardship before becoming accepted citizens in their new homeland. If the St Patrick's Day celebrations are now mainstream, they were born of a different time when the Irish were not as welcome on the streets of New York.

"The story of the Irish in the New World is not a romantic story of liberty and success, but the history of a bitter struggle, as bitter, as painful, though not as long drawn-out as the struggle by which the Irish at last won the right to be a nation." Cecil Woodham-Smith (The Great Hunger)

St Patrick's Day - March 17th - commemorates the death of Ireland's national saint. The first American parade on that day can be traced back to Boston in 1737, sponsored by The Charitable Irish Society to raise funds for ill, homeless and unemployed Irishmen. The first recorded parade in New York was in 1762 when Revolutionary War veterans took to the streets to defy "those who didn't like the Irish very much". But such events were more likely to have been simple processions common to many saints' days across Europe for centuries.