After 259 Years Of St. Patrick’s Day Parades The World’s Largest Parade Was Canceled. Why?

St. Patrick’s Day kicks off a worldwide celebration that is also known as the Feast of St. Patrick. On March 17th, many will wear green in honor of the Irish and decorate with shamrocks.

The wearing of the green is a tradition that dates back to a story written about St. Patrick in 1726.  St. Patrick (c. AD 385–461) was known to use the shamrock to illustrate the Holy Trinity and to have worn green clothing. They’ll revel in the Irish heritage and eat traditional Irish fare, too.

St. Patrick’s Day has been celebrated in the United States since before the country was formed. While the holiday has been a bit more of a rowdy one, with green beer, parades, and talk of leprechauns, in Ireland, the day is more of a solemn event.

It wasn’t until broadcasts of the events in the United States were aired in Ireland that some of the Yankee ways spread across the pond. One tradition that is an Irish-American tradition not common to Ireland is corned beef and cabbage.

• 390 AD -The real St. Patrick wasn’t Irish. He was born in Britain around A.D. 390 to an aristocratic Christian family.  His given name was Maewyn Succat.
• 405 – Patrick escapes from prison and finds passage home after being captured from his home in Wales.
• 427  – Following his religious training, Patrick practices forgiveness and feels God telling him to go back to Ireland as a missionary.
• 432 – St Patrick’s Day commemorates the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. It happened in the year 432.
• 1601 – According to Wikipedia, The world’s first recorded St Patrick’s Parade was in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1601.
• 1631 – The Feast Day honoring Patrick as the Patron Saint of Ireland is established by the Catholic church.
• 17th Century – The color of St. Patrick’s Day was originally blue.  It’s thought that the shift to green happened because of Ireland’s nickname “The Emerald Isle,” the green in the Irish flag and the shamrock, or clover. Green ribbons and shamrocks were worn as early as the 17th century.
• 1737 – The Charitable Irish Society of Boston organized the first observance of Saint Patrick’s Day in the Thirteen Colonies in 1737.  
• 1762 – New York’s first Saint Patrick’s Day observance was similar to that of Boston. It was held on 16 March 1762 in the home of John Marshall, an Irish Protestant, and over the next few years, informal gatherings by Irish immigrants were the norm.
• 1766 – The first recorded parade in New York was by Irish soldiers in the British Army in 1766.
• 18th Century – St. Patrick’s Day has been celebrated in North America since the late 18^th century.
• 1880s – The first fish and chips were served in Dublin in the 1880s by Italian immigrants.
• 1948 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman attends NYC‘s St. Patrick’s Day parade, helping to fight racial prejudice against Irish immigrants.
• 1962 –  marked the first time Chicago dyed their river green for St Patrick’s Day.
• 2010 – the average Irish person aged 15+ drank 11.9 liters (3 gallons) of pure alcohol, according to provisional data. That’s the equivalent of about 44 bottles of vodka, 470 pints, or 124 bottles of wine.
• 2020 – The global COVID-19 pandemic cancels the world’s largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City for the first time in its 259-year history.
• There is a famous Irish dessert called Drisheen, a surprisingly delicious black pudding.
• The leprechaun, famous in Ireland, is said to grant wishes to those who can catch them.
• One of the shortest St. Patrick’s Day parades in the world lasts only 100 yards, from one pub to another, and is held in Dripsey, County Cork, Ireland.
• World’s shortest St Patrick’s Day parade is held in Hot Springs, Arkansas, which runs for a total of 98 feet.
• Beer is one of the most widely consumed beverages on St. Patrick’s Day.
• There are 34.7 million U.S. residents with Irish ancestry. This number is more than seven times the population of Ireland itself.
• St. Patrick never got canonized by a pope, making his saintly status somewhat questionable.
•  At the age of 16, St Patrick was kidnapped and was taken to Ireland. He was kidnapped by a group of Irish raiders who were attacking his family’s estate. He worked there for 6 years tending sheep and then escaped and became a priest.
• On this day, people usually eat corned beef and cabbage, and they wear green. However, corned beef is an English dish and not Irish.
• Corned Beef and Cabbage Was an American Innovation
• Legend says that each leaf of the clover has a meaning: Hope, Faith, Love and Luck.
•  Your odds of finding a four-leaf clover are about 1 in 10,000.
•  More than 450 churches are named for St Patrick in the United States. And 5.5 million tourists visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City every year.
• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 31.5 million Americans claim Irish descent. That’s a lot of Irish Americans! And that includes those who may be 100% Irish or less than 15% Irish. A little bit of the Emerald Isle goes a long way.
• Though the story goes that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, things probably didn’t happen that way. The legend gives him credit for this, but scientists believe that the island of Ireland never actually had snakes in the first place.
• The four-leaf clover being lucky has nothing to do with St. Patrick — legend has it that St. Patrick used a green plant with three leaves, commonly called a shamrock, to teach the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity — only a three-leaf clover can be a shamrock.
• The global COVID-19 pandemic cancels the world’s largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City for the first time in its 259-year history.
• ST. PATRICK’S DAY BY THE NUMBERS:
  • 40–60 pounds – the amount of green dye dumped in the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day.
  • 3rd – most popular drinking day in America.
  • 70% – the percentage by which cabbage shipments increase around St. Patrick’s Day.
  • 57% – the percentage of Americans who celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in 2020.
  • 79% – the percentage of people who planned to don green attire for the holiday in 2020.
  • $40 – the average spending per person on St. Patrick’s Day.
  • 819% – the percentage increase in the serving of Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day.
  • 284 – the number of years that St. Patrick’s Day has been celebrated in America.
  • 30% – the percentage of Americans who celebrate by cooking an Irish meal.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

History

ProFlowers

The Factfile

National Today