Every March 17th, the U.S. becomes an emerald country for a day. Americans wear green clothes and drink green beer. Green milkshakes, bagels and grits appear on menus. In a leprechaun-worthy shenanigan, Chicago even dyes its river green.
Revelers from coast to coast celebrate all things Irish by hoisting pints of Guinness and cheering bagpipers, step dancers and marching bands parading through city streets. These familiar annual traditions weren’t imported from Ireland, however. They were made in America.
In contrast to the merry-making in the U.S., March 17th has been more holy day than holiday in Ireland. Since 1631, St. Patrick’s Day has been a religious feast day to commemorate the anniversary of the 5th-century death of the missionary credited with spreading Christianity to Ireland. For several centuries, March 17th was a day of solemnity in Ireland with Catholics attending church in the morning and partaking of modest feasts in the afternoon. There were no parades and certainly no emerald-tinted food products, particularly since blue, not green, was the traditional color associated with Ireland’s patron saint prior to the 1798 Irish Rebellion.
Boston has long staked claim to the first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the American colonies. On March 17th, 1737, more than two dozen Presbyterians who emigrated from the north of Ireland gathered to honor St. Patrick and form the Charitable Irish Society to assist distressed Irishmen in the city. The oldest Irish organization in North America still holds an annual dinner every St. Patrick’s Day.
Historian Michael Francis, however, unearthed evidence that St. Augustine, Florida, may have hosted America’s first St. Patrick’s Day celebration. While researching Spanish gunpowder expenditure logs, Francis found records that indicate cannon blasts or gunfire were used to honor the saint in 1600 and that residents of the Spanish garrison town processed through the streets in honor of St. Patrick the following year, perhaps at the behest of an Irish priest living there.
The March 17th parades by the Irish through the streets of New York City raised the ire of nativist, anti-Catholic mobs who started their own tradition of “paddy-making” on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day by erecting effigies of Irishmen wearing rags and necklaces of potatoes with whiskey bottles in their hands until the practice was banned in 1803.
After Irish Catholics flooded into the country in the decade following the failure of Ireland’s potato crop in 1845, they clung to their Irish identities and took to the streets in St. Patrick’s Day parades to show strength in numbers as a political retort to nativist “Know-Nothings.”
The meal that became a St. Patrick’s Day staple across the country – corned beef and cabbage – was also an American innovation. While ham and cabbage was eaten in Ireland, corned beef proved a cheaper substitute for impoverished immigrants.
While St. Patrick’s Day evolved in the 20th century into a party day for Americans of all ethnicities, the celebration in Ireland remained solemn. The Connaught Telegraph reported of Ireland’s commemorations on March 17th, 1952: “St. Patrick’s Day was very much like any other day, only duller.” For decades, Irish laws prohibited pubs from opening on holy days such as March 17th. Until 1961, the only legal place to get a drink in the Irish capital on St. Patrick’s Day was the Royal Dublin Dog Show, which naturally attracted those with only a passing canine interest.
The party atmosphere only spread to Ireland after the arrival of television when the Irish could see all the fun being had across the ocean. “Modern Ireland took a cue from America,” McCormack says. The multi-day St. Patrick’s Day Festival, launched in Dublin in 1996, now attracts one million people each year.
The Irish are now adopting St. Patrick’s Day traditions from Irish America such as corned beef and cabbage, McCormack says. There are some American traditions, however, that might not catch on in Ireland, such as green Guinness. As McCormack says, “St. Patrick never drank green beer.”
St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC
Over 150 years ago, Archbishop John Hughes announced his plans to build the “new” St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
In a ceremony at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Archbishop Hughes proposed “for the glory of Almighty God, for the honor of the Blessed and Immaculate Virgin, for the exaltation of Holy Mother Church, for the dignity of our ancient and glorious Catholic name, to erect a Cathedral in the City of New York that may be worthy of our increasing numbers, intelligence, and wealth as a religious community, and at all events, worthy as a public architectural monument, of the present and prospective crowns of this metropolis of the American continent.”
It took 21 years to build and was finally opened to the people in the spring of 1879. According to Archbishop, more than one million prayer candles are lit at St. Patrick’s Cathedral every year and five million people visit the Cathedral every year.
Here are some facts about St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC:
• St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC is the largest Gothic Roman Catholic Cathedral in the U.S.;
• The cornerstone of the Cathedral was laid in 1858;
• The Cathedral was named after St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, in response to the Irish immigrants;
• The new gallery organ, which was re-placed in 1930, has 7,855 pipes;
• It has 21 altars and 19 bells, each na-med after a different saint;
• The Cathedral has more than 2,800 stained glass panels;
• Eight Archbishops of New York are buried in a crypt under the high altar;
• In normal times, there are between 18 and 15 masses said every day, and 150 weddings every year.
The NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade
The NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade is one of New York City’s greatest traditions. The first parade was on March 17th, 1762. And it was comprised of a band of homesick, Irish ex-patriots and Irish military members serving with the British Army stationed in the colonies in New York. This was a time when the wearing of green was a sign of Irish pride but was banned in Ireland. In that 1762 parade, participants reveled in the freedom to speak Irish, wear green, sing Irish songs and play the pipes to Irish tunes that were meaningful to the Irish immigrants of that time.
Today, the Parade starts at 44th Street and 5th Avenue at 11am and proceeds up the avenue to 79th Street. Throughout the day along the Parade route, millions of spectators come to celebrate.
Sources: history.com, nycstpatricksparade.org & irishcentral.com