History of St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated annually on March 17, the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for over 1,000 years.
On St. Patrick’s Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon.
Lenten prohibitions against the consumption of meat were waived and people would dance, drink and feast–on the traditional meal of Irish bacon and cabbage.
So, who was St. Patrick?
St. Patrick was born in Britain—not Ireland—to wealthy parents near the end of the fourth century. He is believed to have died on March 17, around 460 A.D.
Although his father was a Christian deacon, it has been suggested that he probably took on the role because of tax incentives and there is no evidence that Patrick came from a particularly religious family.
At the age of 16, Patrick was taken prisoner by a group of Irish raiders who were attacking his family’s estate.
They transported him to Ireland where he spent six years in captivity. (There is some dispute over where this captivity took place. Although many believe he was taken to live in Mount Slemish in County Antrim, it is more likely that he was held in County Mayo near Killala.)
During this time, he worked as a shepherd, outdoors and away from people.
Lonely and afraid, he turned to his religion for solace, becoming a devout Christian. (It is also believed that Patrick first began to dream of converting the Irish people to Christianity during his captivity.)
After more than six years as a prisoner, Patrick escaped. According to his writing, a voice—which he believed to be God’s—spoke to him in a dream, telling him it was time to leave Ireland.
To do so, Patrick walked nearly 200 miles from County Mayo, where it is believed he was held, to the Irish coast.
After escaping to Britain, Patrick reported that he experienced a second revelation—an angel in a dream tells him to return to Ireland as a missionary. Soon after, Patrick began religious training, a course of study that lasted more than 15 years.
After his ordination as a priest, he was sent to Ireland with a dual mission: to minister to Christians already living in Ireland and to begin to convert the Irish.
Familiar with the Irish language and culture, Patrick chose to incorporate traditional ritual into his lessons of Christianity instead of attempting to eradicate native Irish beliefs.
For instance, he used bonfires to celebrate Easter since the Irish were used to honoring their gods with fire.
He also superimposed a sun, a powerful Irish symbol, onto the Christian cross to create what is now called a Celtic cross, so that veneration of the symbol would seem more natural to the Irish.
Although there were a small number of Christians on the island when Patrick arrived, most Irish practiced a nature-based pagan religion.
The Irish culture centered around a rich tradition of oral legend and myth. When this is considered, it is no surprise that the story of Patrick’s life became exaggerated over the centuries—spinning exciting tales to remember history has always been a part of the Irish way of life.
He may be known as the patron saint of Ireland, but Patrick was never actually canonized by the Catholic Church. This is simply due to the era he lived in.
During the first millennium, there was no formal canonization process in the Catholic Church.
After becoming a priest and helping to spread Christianity throughout Ireland, Patrick was likely proclaimed a saint by popular acclaim.
In the centuries following St. Patrick’s death (believed to have been on March 17, 461), the mythology surrounding his life became ever more ingrained in the Irish culture.
Perhaps the most well-known legend of St. Patrick is that he explained the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) using the three leaves of a native Irish clover, the shamrock.
More than 100 St. Patrick’s Day parades are held across the United States; New York City and Boston are home to the largest celebrations.
Since around the ninth or 10th century, people in Ireland have been observing the Roman Catholic feast day of St. Patrick on March 17.
The first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place not in Ireland but in America. Records show that 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 St. Patrick’s Day celebration a year earlier were organized by the Spanish Colony’s Irish vicar Ricardo Artur.
More than a century later, 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, Irish patriotism among American 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 (which actually first became popular in the Scottish and British armies) 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.
Today, that parade 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.
Up until the mid-19th century, most Irish immigrants in America were members of the Protestant middle class.
When the Great Potato Famine hit Ireland in 1845, close to 1 million poor and uneducated Irish Catholics began pouring into America to escape starvation.
Despised for their alien religious beliefs and unfamiliar accents by the American Protestant majority, 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 block, 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.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman attended New York City‘s St. Patrick’s Day parade, a proud moment for the many Irish Americans whose ancestors had to fight stereotypes and racial prejudice to find acceptance in the New World.
As Irish immigrants spread out over the United States, other cities developed their own traditions. One of these 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.
Although Chicago historians claim their city’s idea for a river of green was original, some natives of Savannah, Georgia (whose St. Patrick’s Day parade, the oldest in the nation, dates back to 1813) believe the idea originated in their town.
They point out that, in 1961, a hotel restaurant manager named Tom Woolley convinced city officials to dye Savannah’s river green.
The experiment didn’t exactly work as planned, and the water only took on a slight greenish hue. Savannah never attempted to dye its river again, but Woolley maintains (though others refute the claim) that he personally suggested the idea to Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley.
Today, people of all backgrounds celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, especially throughout the United States, Canada and Australia.
Although North America is home to the largest productions, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated around the world in locations far from Ireland, including Japan, Singapore and Russia.
In modern-day Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day was traditionally been a religious occasion. In fact, up until the 1970s, Irish laws mandated that pubs be closed on March 17.
Beginning in 1995, however, the Irish government began a national campaign to use interest in St. Patrick’s Day to drive tourism and showcase Ireland and Irish culture to the rest of the world.
One icon of the Irish holiday is the Leprechaun. The original Irish name for these figures of folklore is “lobaircin,” meaning “small-bodied fellow.”
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. In Celtic folktales, leprechauns were cranky souls, responsible for mending the shoes of the other fairies.
Though only minor figures in Celtic folklore, leprechauns were known for their trickery, which they often used to protect their much-fabled treasure. Leprechauns have their own holiday on May 13, but are also celebrated on St. Patrick’s, with many dressing up as the wily fairies.
While St. Patrick’s Day is now associated with wearing green, parades and beer, the holiday is grounded in history that dates back more than 1,500 years.
Much of what is known about St. Patrick’s life has been interwoven with folklore and legend.
As I stated earlier, historians generally believe that St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born in Britain (not Ireland) near the end of the 4th century.
At age 16 he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and sold as a slave to a Celtic priest in Northern Ireland.
After toiling for six years as a shepherd, he escaped back to Britain. He eventually returned to Ireland as a Christian missionary.
Among the legends associated with St. Patrick is that he stood atop an Irish hillside and banished snakes from Ireland—prompting all serpents to slither away into the sea.
In fact, research suggests snakes never occupied the Emerald Isle in the first place. There are no signs of snakes in the country’s fossil record. And water has surrounded Ireland since the last glacial period. Before that, the region was covered in ice and would have been too cold for snakes.
Another Irish legend centers around the shamrock, a three-leaf clover, that has been associated with Ireland for centuries.
It was called the “seamroy” by the Celts and was considered a sacred plant that symbolized the arrival of spring. According to legend, St. Patrick used the plant as a visual guide when explaining the Holy Trinity. By the 17th century, the shamrock had become a symbol of emerging Irish nationalism.
The meal that became a St. Patrick’s Day staple across the country—corned beef and cabbage—was an American innovation.
While ham and cabbage were eaten in Ireland, corned beef offered a cheaper substitute for impoverished immigrants.
Irish-Americans living in the slums of lower Manhattan in the late 19th century and early 20th, purchased leftover corned beef from ships returning from the tea trade in China. The Irish would boil the beef three times—the last time with cabbage—to remove some of the brine.
Corned beef and cabbage is one of the most popular meals to eat on St. Patrick’s Day. However, it’s not necessarily a traditional Irish recipe, as cows in Ireland were used more for their milk than their meat.
That changed in the late 1600s, according to Smithsonian Magazine, when cattle exports to England lowered the cost for salted beef production.
“The British invented the term ‘corned beef’ in the 17th century to describe the size of the salt crystals used to cure the meat, the size of corn kernels,” according to the magazine.
Ireland became a major corned beef producer for England and other countries because its salt tax was cheaper than England’s and it had large numbers of cattle. However, many of the Irish people still could not afford the meat for themselves.
In the 1800s, Irish immigrants in the U.S.—many of them in New York City—were able to acquire beef for themselves, primarily from Jewish butchers.
“The corned beef they made was from brisket, a kosher cut of meat from the front of the cow,” according to Smithsonian Magazine. “Since brisket is a tougher cut, the salting and cooking processes transformed the meat into the extremely tender, flavorful corned beef we know of today.”
These Irish immigrants were the ones who helped to shape St. Patrick’s Day into a cultural celebration that goes beyond its religious origin.
And of course, that celebration had to come with a special meal. “The immigrants splurged on their neighbor’s flavorful corned beef, which was accompanied by their beloved potato and the most affordable vegetable, cabbage,” Smithsonian Magazine says. “It didn’t take long for corned beef and cabbage to become associated with St. Patrick’s Day.”
In 1991, Congress proclaimed March to be Irish-American Heritage Month. It honors the achievements and contributions of Irish immigrants and their descendants who are living in the United States today.
As of 2020, nearly 10% of the U.S. population (or roughly 30.4 million people) claims Irish ancestry, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s more than the population of Ireland itself, which is around 5 million people.
Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago, is the U.S. county with the most people (438,350 as of 2019) who claim Irish ancestry. And in 2019 there were 111,886 U.S. residents who reported their birthplace as Ireland.
There are several cities in the U.S. whose names have an Irish theme. For instance, there are places in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and other states with the name of Shamrock. Plus, there are several cities named Dublin, including ones in California and Ohio.
More whimsical Irish-themed towns include Emerald Isle, North Carolina, and the township of Irishtown, Illinois. Other locations feature the name Clover.
In closing, here are a few interesting St. Patrick’s Day facts to remember.
- Saint Patrick didn’t wear green. His color was “Saint Patrick’s blue.” The color green became associated with St. Patrick’s Day after it was linked to the Irish independence movement in the late 18th century.
- Despite his Irish notoriety, Saint Patrick was British. He was born to Roman parents in Scotland or Wales in the late fourth century.
- According to Irish legend, Saint Patrick used the shamrock as a metaphor for the Holy Trinity, father, son and holy spirit, when he was first introducing Christianity to Ireland.
- Saint Patrick is credited for driving the snakes out of Ireland, but according to the fossil record, Ireland has never been home to snakes as it was too cold to host reptiles during the Ice Age. The surrounding seas have kept snakes out since.
- There isn’t any corn in the traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal of corned beef and cabbage. The name is a reference to the large grains of salt historically used to cure meats, which were also known as “corns.”
- Saint Patrick was born “Maewyn Succat” but changed his name to “Patricius” after becoming a priest.
- Irish immigrants began observing St. Patrick’s Day in Boston in 1737 and the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in America was held in New York City in 1766.
- St. Patrick was never officially canonized as a saint.
So, there you have it folks. Hopefully, you have all learned a little something about St. Patrick’s Day and its rich traditions here in the US and will have a better understanding of the celebrations and the huge parade that will take place this coming weekend here in Lake Ozark.
Have a great time and be safe!
Callers? Do you have any St. Patty’s day stories you would like to share?