St Patrick’s Day

The saint

Saint Patrick was a fifth-century Christian missionary and bishop. According to the Declaration, a text believed to have been written by Patrick himself, he was born into a wealthy Romano-British family, was kidnapped by Irish raiders at the age of sixteen and spent six years as a slave working as a shepherd, during which he found God. He escaped home, became a priest and, according to tradition, returned to convert the Irish to Christianity. Tradition holds that he died on 17 March and was buried at Downpatrick. His feast day became an official Christian feast in the early seventeenth century, and the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking were lifted for the day.

Green and shamrocks

On St Patrick’s Day people wear shamrocks and green. Patrick is said to have used the three-leaved shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity, a story that first appears in writing in 1726. Green ribbons and shamrocks have been worn on the day since at least the 1680s, and the colour grew into a symbol of Ireland over the following centuries. Celebrations include parades, festivals and céilithe, gatherings with traditional music, and the weeks from 1 to 17 March are Seachtain na Gaeilge, Irish Language Week. An old custom, “drowning the shamrock”, puts a shamrock in the bottom of a glass of whiskey, beer or cider, which is drunk as a toast at the end of the day.

Modern celebrations owe much to the Irish abroad. Parades began in North America in the eighteenth century and only spread to Ireland in the twentieth, and until the late twentieth century the day was often celebrated more in the diaspora than at home. Since 2010, Tourism Ireland’s Global Greening has lit up more than 300 landmarks in fifty countries in green.

Dublin’s parade

The National St Patrick’s Day Parade begins at noon on 17 March at Parnell Square, runs down O’Connell Street and over O’Connell Bridge, and crosses the south side of the city to the junction of Cuffe Street and Kevin Street, a route of 3.2 kilometres. International marching bands, pageants and ceremonial groups take part. There are grandstands, but most people find a spot along the route — the organisers advise arriving early.