Hulk Say: Happy St. Patty's Day!

Oh, you know us New Yorkers Love the St. Patty's day!!

When I was a kid growing up in Texas, St. Patrick's day was sort of a dreaded event... especially if I was headed off to school, and forgot to wear green. The pinching policy was indeed in full force. That was really the main thing we did on the day.

When I moved to NYC, I was sort of amazed to find that the pinching policy was not something practiced everywhere. And having grown up in a "dry" county, drinking certainly wasn't part of the festivities either. Not so in NYC.

It must be the biggest single day for the green food dye industry as everything from the Boston waters to the NYC beer becomes a lovely shade of green. And cornbeef and cabbage is a must.

Oh, and the parade! I can hear it even as I type, taking place outside my windows. Nobody loves a parade like the NYC Irish.

Above: Here's something big and green in honor of the event! And in honor of my partial Irish heritage: Have a good day everybody, and good luck to us all!


--Renee
:-)

And now for a little bit o' history:

History of St. Patrick's Day:

According to legend, Saint Patrick used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pre-Christian Irish people.

It is believed that Saint Patrick's Day has been celebrated in Ireland since before the 1600s. It was also believed to have served as a one-day break during Lent[citation needed], the forty day period of fasting. This would involve drinking alcohol; something which became a tradition. Saint Patrick's feast day was finally placed on the universal liturgical calendar in the Catholic Church due to the influence of the Waterford-born Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding in the early 1600s. Saint Patrick's Day thus became a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. The church calendar avoids the observance of saints' feasts during certain solemnities, moving the saint's day to a time outside those periods. Saint Patrick's Day is very occasionally affected by this requirement – when 17 March falls during Holy Week. This happened in 1940 when Saint Patrick's Day was observed on 3 April in order to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and again in 2008, having been observed on 15 March. Saint Patrick's Day will not fall within Holy Week again until 2160.

In 1903, Saint Patrick's Day became an official public holiday in Ireland. This was thanks to the Bank Holiday (Ireland) Act 1903, an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament introduced by the Irish MP James O'Mara. O'Mara later introduced the law which required that pubs be closed on 17 March after drinking got out of hand, a provision which was repealed only in the 1970s. The first Saint Patrick's Day parade held in the Irish Free State was held in Dublin in 1931 and was reviewed by the then Minister of Defense Desmond Fitzgerald. Although secular celebrations now exist, the holiday remains a religious observance in Ireland, for both the Roman Catholic Church and Church of Ireland.

Traditional Saint Patrick's Day badges from the early 20th century, photographed at the Museum of Country Life in County Mayo

It was only in the mid-1990s that the Irish government 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 aim to:

— Offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebrations in the world and promote excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity, grassroots involvement, and marketing activity.

— Provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent, (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and expressive celebrations.

— Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal, as we approach the new millennium.

The first Saint Patrick's Festival was held on 17 March 1996. In 1997, it became a three-day event, and by 2000 it was a four-day event. By 2006, the festival was five days long; over 675,000 people attended the 2009 parade. Overall 2009's five day festival saw close to one million visitors that took part in the festivities that included concerts, outdoor theatre performances, and fireworks.

The topic of the 2004 St. Patrick's Symposium was "Talking Irish," during which the nature of Irish identity, economic success, and the future were discussed. Since 1996, there has been a greater emphasis on celebrating and projecting a fluid and inclusive notion of "Irishness" rather than an identity based around traditional religious or ethnic allegiance. The week around Saint Patrick's Day usually involves Irish language speakers using more Irish during seachtain na Gaeilge ("Irish Week").

As well as Dublin, many other Irish cities, towns and villages hold their own parades and festivals, including Cork, Belfast, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford.
The biggest celebrations outside Dublin are in Downpatrick, County Down, where Saint Patrick is rumoured to be buried following his death on 17 March 461. In 2004, according to Down District Council, the week-long St. Patrick's Festival had over 2,000 participants and 82 floats, bands, and performers, and was watched by over 30,000 people.

The shortest St Patrick's Day parade in the world takes place in Dripsey, Cork. The parade lasts just 100 yards and travels between the village's two pubs.

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So, that's it, my friends. The luck o' the Irish be with us, and four leaf clovers to everyone! :-)