HISTORY93 - Saint Patrick's Day

I’ve been meaning to do a blog on Saint Patrick’s Day for a while now.  With the holiday coming up this March, this looked like a good time to do it.

After an introduction, I will talk about Saint Patrick, the early history of Saint Patrick’s Day, and then the modern era of the holiday.

I will list my sources at the end.

 

Introduction

Saint Patrick's Day is a religious and cultural holiday held annually on the 17^th of March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (c. AD 385 - c. AD 461), the patron saint of Ireland.

Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Christian (Roman Catholic) feast day in the early 17^th century.  The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the introduction of Christianity in Ireland, and remained a religious holiday only in Ireland for over 275 years.

Strangely, Saint Patrick’s Day was first celebrated to honor Irish heritage and culture in general, in Colonial America, by Irish immigrants, in the early 17^thcentury.  Among Irish immigrants and their descendants in America, St. Patrick’s Day became a day to celebrate being Irish with public parades and festivals, traditional Irish social gatherings, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.  Historically the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol were lifted for the day.  

Saint Patrick’s Day didn't become a public holiday in Ireland until 1903, and from then on, Ireland started to mirror the celebrations in America.

Today, Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated around the world. 

Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick was a fifth-century Roman-British Christian (Roman Catholic) missionary and Bishop in Ireland.  Much of what is known about Saint Patrick comes from the Declaration, which was allegedly written by Patrick himself.  It is believed that he was born in Roman Britain in the fourth century, around the year 385, into a wealthy Roman-British family.  His father was a deacon and his grandfather was a priest in the Christian church, established in Britain by the Romans.

Note:  It is not certain when Christianity was introduced to Britain, but it became increasingly popular among the elite in the 4^th century after the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine in AD 312.  Pagan traditions remained strong, though. 

According to the Declaration, at the age of sixteen, Patrick and many of his father’s slaves and vassals were captured by Irish raiders and sold as slaves in Ireland.  Forced to work as a shepherd, Patrick suffered greatly from hunger and cold, and during this time, he found God.

After six years, at the age of 22, Patrick escaped and returned to Britain, where he subsequently began 15 years of religious training and was ordained into the priesthood.  He was consecrated as a Catholic bishop at the age of 43.  His great desire was to go back to pagan Ireland to spread the word of Christianity. 

He landed in Ireland in either 432 or 433, somewhere on the Wicklow coast in Northern Ireland, and after obtaining the protection of local kings, went on to spread Christianity to the Irish through baptism and confirmation.

As the “apostle to Ireland” in the fifth century, he had to fight against the pagan religion that was entrenched there.  His powerful preaching and energetic building of the church throughout the land helped to root Christianity in Ireland.

He ordained many priests, divided the country into dioceses, held Church councils, and founded several churches, schools, and monasteries. Patrick almost single-handedly converted an entire people to Christianity. 

Tradition holds that he died on March 17, 461, and was buried in the town of Downpatrick in Northern Ireland.  

In less than a century after St. Patrick’s death, Ireland was covered with churches and convents for men and women. The monastic institutions were training schools and workshops for transcribing sacred books.  So, when the rest of Europe was sinking into the dark ages of ignorance in the dissolution of the Roman Empire, Ireland was prepared and sent out missionaries to Scotland, North Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and North Italy - and was greatly responsible for Christianizing Europe.

 

Saint Patrick depicted in a stained-glass window at Saint Benin’s Church, Ireland.

 

Although Patrick was venerated as a saint in Ireland from the seventh century, he was never formally canonized, having lived before the current laws of the Catholic Church in these matters.  Saint Patrick is now an integral part of Irish culture and one of Christianity’s most widely known figures.

 

Early History of Saint Patrick’s Day

In the centuries following Patrick’s death, mythology surrounding his life became ever more ingrained in the Irish culture.  Many legends grew up around him - for example, that he drove the snakes out of Ireland, and used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

A shamrock is a three-leaf type of clover used as a symbol of Ireland.

 

It wasn't until the 1631, that 17 March, the traditional day of Saint Patrick’s death, was added to the Catholic breviary (a book of prayers) as the Feast of St Patrick.  Saint Patrick’s Day became a holy day of obligation in Ireland.  For most Irish people at home, the day remained primarily religious into the 20^th century. The elite of Irish society did mark the day with a grand ball in Dublin Castle each year in the second half of the 19^thcentury.  But for the public at large, it was a quiet day with no parades or public events.

In contrast, starting even before March 17 was added to the Catholic list of holy feasts, Irish immigrants to Colonial America, far from home, began to honor Irish heritage and culture on March 17 with Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations.

A St. Patrick’s Day parade was held on March 17, 1601 in a Spanish colony in what is now St. Augustine, Florida.  The parade, and a celebration a year earlier were apparently organized by the Spanish colony’s Irish vicar Ricardo Artur.

Subsequently, it was immigrants from Ireland, particularly to England’s American Colonies and later the United States, who transformed St. Patrick’s Day into a largely secular holiday of revelry and celebration of things Irish. 

Cities with large numbers of Irish immigrants staged the most extensive celebrations, which included elaborate parades.  Boston held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1737, followed by New York City in 1762.  As Irish populations grew in America, so did St. Patrick's Day festivities. 

Homesick Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched in New York City on March 17, 1772 to honor the Irish patron saint.  Enthusiasm for the St. Patrick's Day parades in New York City, Boston and other early American cities only grew from there.

Over the next 35 years, patriotism among Irish immigrants flourished, prompting the rise of so-called “Irish Aid” societies like the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick and the Hibernian Society.  Each group would hold annual parades featuring bagpipes and drums.

In 1848, several New York Irish Aid societies decided to unite their parades to form one official New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

When the Great Potato Famine hit Ireland in 1845, close to one million poor and uneducated Irish Catholics began pouring into America to escape starvation.  Many who were forced to leave Ireland during the Great Hunger brought a lot of memories, but they didn’t have their country, so St. Patrick’s Day was a celebration of being Irish.

Saint Patrick’s Day grew in significance following the end of the U.S. Civil War and the arrival, across the 19^th century, of ever-increasing numbers of Irish immigrants.  Facing American Protestant majority detractors who characterized them as drunken, violent, criminalized, and diseased, Irish-Americans were looking for ways to display their civic pride and the strength of their identity.  St. Patrick’s Day celebrations were originally focused on districts where the Irish lived and were highly localized.  With symbols and speeches, Irish-Americans celebrated their Catholicism and patron saint and praised the spirit of Irish nationalism in the old country, but they also stressed their patriotic belief in their new home. 

Despised for their alien religious beliefs and unfamiliar accents, the immigrants had trouble finding even menial jobs.  When Irish Americans in the country’s cities took to the streets on St. Patrick’s Day to celebrate their heritage, newspapers portrayed them in cartoons as drunk, violent monkeys.

The American Irish soon began to realize, however, that their large and growing numbers endowed them with a political power that had yet to be exploited.  They started to organize, and their voting bloc, known as the “green machine,” became an important swing vote for political hopefuls.  Suddenly, annual St. Patrick’s Day parades became a show of strength for Irish Americans, as well as a must-attend event for a slew of political candidates.

Wearing green clothes became common in the U.S. at St. Patrick's Day parades and celebrations in the 1800s.  It was a symbol that Irish-Americans used to honor their heritage and seems to have stuck all these years later.

Note: Ireland is known for its wide expanses of lush, green fields.  In fact, its nickname is the Emerald Isle.  The color green was further associated with Ireland from the 1640s, when the green harp flag was used by the Irish Catholic Confederation, during the Irish Confederate Wars (1641 - 1653) - a series of civil wars in the kingdoms of Ireland, England, and Scotland.  The flag represented "the sacred emblem of Ireland's unconquered soul.”  Green ribbons and shamrocks have been worn on St Patrick's Day since at least the 1680s.

The green harp flag is the sacred emblem of Ireland's unconquered soul.

 

Another American St. Patrick’s Day tradition related to Ireland is corned beef and cabbage.  While newly immigrated Irish were used to eating salt pork back at home, its nearest counterpart, bacon, was prohibitively expensive in the U.S.  So, their best option for a lower-cost meat was corned beef.  What was once a luxury item was now a food that was inexpensive and readily available.  So it was that the Irish-American consumption of corned beef became associated with the holiday of St. Patrick’s Day.

 

Modern Era of Saint Patrick’s Day

This section will cover St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the United States, Ireland, and Globally.

St. Patrick’s Day in the United States.  During the 1900s, Americans on March 17 were wearing green clothes, eating corned beef and cabbage, and attending massive parades across the country.

A card from 1907.

 

As Irish immigrants spread out over the United States, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations went with them and new traditions were added to the holiday, and many non-Irish heritage Americans joined the festivities.

Green beer was first made in 1914 by Thomas Hayes Curtin, an Irish-American doctor who dyed beer green for a St. Patrick's Day celebration at his Bronx-based social club.  Green beer quickly caught on as a popular, festive way to celebrate St. Paddy's Day.

Leprechauns were first associated with St. Patrick's Day in1959.  A Disney film, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, about an old Irish man and his leprechaun friends, was released right as St. Patrick's Day parades were becoming more common.  So, it just happened naturally: Leprechauns became a staple in St. Patrick's Day festivities.

Note: Belief in leprechauns probably stems from Celtic belief in fairies, tiny men and women who could use their magical powers to serve good or evil.  Leprechauns were written about in 19^th - century Irish fables.  They were described as short men who just happened to be exceptional shoemakers.  After making their money, they hid their coins in pots of gold at the end of rainbows.

Leprechauns are associated with St. Patrick's Day.

 

Another American Saint Patrick’s Day tradition is Chicago’s annual dyeing of the Chicago River green.  The practice started in 1962, when city pollution-control workers used dyes to trace illegal sewage discharges and realized that the green dye might provide a unique way to celebrate the holiday.  That year, they released 100 pounds of green vegetable dye into the river - enough to keep it green for a week.  Today, in order to minimize environmental damage, only 40 pounds of dye are used, and the river turns green for only several hours.

The Chicago River is dyed green on St. Patrick's Day.

Today, the Saint Patrick’s Day parade in New York City is the world‘s oldest civilian parade and the largest in the United States, with over 150,000 participants.  Each year, nearly 3 million people line the 1.5-mile parade route to watch the procession, which takes more than five hours.  Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Savannah also celebrate the day with parades involving between 10,000 and 20,000 participants each. 

Saint Patrick’s Day parade in New York City.

 

Today, on Saint Patrick's Day in America, it is customary to wear shamrocks, green clothing, or green accessories.

St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland.  Until the late 20^th century, Saint Patrick's Day was often a bigger celebration among Irish-Americans than it was in Ireland.  

Saint Patrick’s Day didn't actually become a public holiday in Ireland until 1903!  The first St Patrick’s Day parade there was held in town of Waterford in that same year. 

For most of the next 30 years, the day was a somewhat muted affair, with Ireland going through political upheaval including a civil war and the traumatic partition of its borders.

On Saint Patrick's Day 1916, the Irish Volunteers - an Irish nationalist paramilitary organization - held parades throughout Ireland.  Authorities recorded 38 St. Patrick's Day parades, involving 6,000 marchers, almost half of whom were reported to be armed.  The following month, the Irish Volunteers launched the Easter Rising against British rule.  This marked the beginning of the Irish revolutionary period that led to the establishment in 1922 of the Irish Free State, an entity independent from the United Kingdom but within the British Empire.  (In 1948, The Republic of Ireland Act declared that the description of Ireland was to be the Republic of Ireland.)

Ireland was partitioned into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.  Northern Ireland remained with the United Kingdom as a separate country.

Northern Ireland was partitioned from the island of Ireland..

 

St. Patrick’ Day celebrations remained low-key after the creation of the Irish Free State; the only state-organized observance was a military procession and trooping of the colors, and an Irish-language mass attended by government ministers.

In 1927, the Irish Free State government banned the selling of alcohol on St Patrick's Day, although it remained legal in Northern Ireland.  The ban was not repealed until 1961,

The first official, Irish Free State-sponsored St. Patrick’s Day parade took place in the capital, Dublin, in 1931.

In Northern Ireland, the celebration of Saint Patrick's Day was affected by sectarian divisions.  Although it was a public holiday, Northern Ireland's unionist government did not officially observe St Patrick's Day.  During the conflict known as the Troubles (late 1960s - late 1990s), where a key issue was the autonomy of Northern Ireland, public St Patrick's Day celebrations were rare.

Since the late 1990s, there have been cross-community St. Patrick's Day parades in towns throughout Northern Ireland, which have attracted thousands of spectators.

In the mid-1990s the government of the Republic of Ireland began a campaign to use Saint Patrick's Day to showcase Ireland and its culture.  The government set up a group called St Patrick's Festival, with the aims of creating a world-class national festival and "to project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional, and sophisticated country with wide appeal.”  The first Saint Patrick's Festival was held on March 17, 1996.  In 1997, it became a three-day event, and by 2006, the festival was five days long.  More than 675,000 people attended the 2009 parade, and that year's festival saw almost 1 million visitors, who took part in festivities that included concerts, outdoor theatre performances, and fireworks. 

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin is now one of the largest in the world!

Saint Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin, Ireland.

 

Irish Government ministers travel abroad on official visits to various countries around the time of St Patrick's Day to promote Ireland.

The popularity of corned beef and cabbage never crossed the Atlantic to the homeland.  Instead of corned beef and cabbage, the traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal eaten in Ireland is lamb or bacon.  In fact, many of what we consider St. Patrick’s Day celebrations didn’t make it there until recently.  St. Patrick’s Day parades and festivals began in the U.S.  And, until 1961, pubs were closed by law in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day.  Today in Ireland, thanks to Irish tourism and Guinness, you will find many of the Irish American traditions.  This relaxation of fasting and alcohol drinking rules in 1961, is today notably marked by the consumption of stout, a dark ale beer that is a key part of the celebration, with breweries preparing months in advance for the demand. 

Global St. Patrick’s Day.  St. Patrick’s Day is now a global event.  From Chicago famously coloring its river green on March 17^th to jaunty street parades in far-flung cities like Tokyo and Sydney.  Huge celebrations also take place in the land of St. Patrick’s birth, particularly in British cities like Liverpool and Birmingham, which contain many residents with Irish ancestry who are more than happy to embrace their heritage.  Although North America is home to the largest productions, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated around the world.

Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, Irish traditional music sessions, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.  There are also formal gatherings such as banquets and dances, although these were more common in the past.

The participants generally include marching bands, the military, fire brigades, cultural organizations, charitable organizations, voluntary associations, youth groups, fraternities, and so on.  Over time, many of the parades have become more akin to a carnival.

Since 2010, famous landmarks have been lit up in green on Saint Patrick's Day.  The Sydney Opera House and the Sky Tower in Auckland were the first landmarks to participate, and since then over 300 landmarks in fifty countries across the globe have gone green for Saint Patrick's Day.

Sydney, Australia Opera House lit up in green for Saint Patrick’s Day.

 

Christians may also attend church services, and the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol are lifted for the day.  Perhaps because of this, drinking alcohol - particularly Irish whiskey, beer, or cider - has become an integral part of the celebrations.

Since 1994, it has become customary for the Irish Prime Minister to meet with the President of the United States on or around Saint Patrick's Day.  Traditionally the Irish Prime Minister presents the U.S. president a Waterford Crystal bowl filled with shamrocks. 

 

Wherever you go and whatever you do, may the luck of the Irish be there with you.

 

Sources:  My principal sources include: “Saint Patrick’s Day,” en.wikipedia.org; “History of St. Patrick’s Day,” history.com; “St. Patrick’s Day,” kids.nationalgeographic.com; “St. Patrick’s Day,” britannica.com; “The History of St. Patrick’s Day and Why It’s Celebrated Today,” thepioneerwoman.com; “St. Patrick’s Day History, Tradition + Facts,” theiririshroadtrip.com; “History Ireland,” historyirelad.com; plus, numerous other online sources.