Saint Patrick’s Day, also known as Paddy’s Day or Patrick’s Day depending on where you are is a bit of a big day for us Irish.
Saint Patrick is Ireland’s National Saint or Patron Saint and we celebrate this on the 17th March, which is the date of his death. We have a public holiday or bank holiday here in Ireland and the entire island celebrates this day.
Our National Saint’s day has been adopted around the world as a day of celebration, not just amongst our diaspora of which there are many but also by large portions of our Diaspora’s communities.
This is a great thing to see, the reach of our little island.
A few facts (or legends) about our man in green:
Sometime in the 5th Century a young man aged 16 was captured in Wales by marauding Irish (our bad!) and taken back to Ireland where he (Patrick) was forced to work as a shepherd.
Patrick escaped his captors after six years and fled back to Great Britain where he became a cleric and returned to Ireland and started to preach Christianity to the pagan locals (us!).
Patrick used the native shamrock plant to explain Christian principles to the pagan natives, thus started the tradition of wearing shamrock or exchanging gifts of shamrock on this day. So now the humble shamrock is the unofficial symbol of all things Irish.
Begorrah!
Saint Patrick is supposed to have fasted on top of a Mayo mountain Croagh Patrick (“The Reek”) for 40 days and now every year it is the site of a pilgrimage. Regardless of your beliefs this pilgrimage or mountain walk is amazing and should be done for the views alone. I have done this many times, even on the pilgrimage day (last Sunday in July). I did not however do the traditional hardcore version of the pilgrimage which is carried out barefoot.
Green Day – Today
Today, our national day is a big deal and people the world over flock to Irish stores to buy traditional irish gifts or gag/funny gifts to celebrate the day. Large shamrocks, leprechaun hats, and Guinness are in big demand on this day.
People come out on the streets to watch their local parades which range from the rather large New York parade to the more modest 98 foot long parade in Hot Spings, AR.
Funnily enough the first Saint Patrick’s Day Parade took place in Boston in 1737, in Ireland we did not have our first Paddy’s Day Parade until 1975!
Parade’s are not a very Irish thing and we celebrated in our way, where mass was definitely involved but followed by less sombre activities……..hic!
So wherever you are and whatever you find yourself doing we hope you enjoy March 17th.
Begorrah!
We have noticed that the more people enjoy March 17th the less they enjoy March 18th.
#InternationalHangoverDay
So for some creative irish gift ideas why not have a look here