In Ireland, and well beyond, St Patrick is celebrated with a level of enthusiasm enjoyed by no other patron saint on the planet. For many first- and later-generation Irish, 17
March is associated with an outpouring of patriotism and Paddy’s Day, as it’s colloquially known, has become an excuse to throw a party everywhere from the Americas to the Antipodes.
Surprisingly to pretty much everyone who's donned a green hat and raised a pint of Guinness in celebration of St Patrick's Day, St Patrick himself wasn't actually Irish. But how did a snake-banishing bloke born in Britain in the 5th century become an Irish superstar, heralded as an internationally recognised icon of Celtic culture?
Who was St Patrick and how did he end up in Ireland?
Patrick’s origin story is opaque, but it’s believed he was captured as a teenager by Celtic pirates during a raid on a Roman-era British town, taken to Ireland and enslaved.
According to his own writings, Patrick then found faith, escaped and studied Christianity. After being ordained in Europe, he returned to Ireland, became a bishop and converted much of the pagan population, famously using the three-leafed shamrock as a symbol for the Holy Trinity.
Why do we celebrate St Patrick's Day on 17 March?
The anniversary of St Patrick's death, 17 March, became a feast day, when people wore shamrocks and the colour green. During the Dark Ages, when many monasteries were ransacked by Vikings, Ireland’s position on the periphery of Europe offered protection, and the country became a place of refuge for monks and manuscripts – a land of saints and scholars – elevating Patrick’s legacy.
Over the centuries, poverty, politics, displacement, fortune hunting, military service and missionary work saw many people leave Ireland, but the massive diaspora that followed the famine in the 1840s scattered the Irish all over the globe. They took their traditions, including reverence of St Patrick, with them.
Is St Patrick's Day a national holiday?
In Ireland, 17 March has become the de facto National Day, not least because the country has been divided ever since the 26 counties (now the Republic of Ireland) secured limited independence in 1922. The republic doesn’t have a date on which it can celebrate winning full political freedom from the British Empire, unlike the USA and many Commonwealth nations.
Across the whole island, St Patrick’s Day is now officially observed as a national holiday. It was made a ‘bank holiday’ in 1903, prior to partition, and has been observed in the south since the formation of the Free State but only became a legally recognised holiday for everyone in Northern Ireland in 2000. This status amplifies the date as a day of celebration; by contrast, the days of patron saints St George and St David are not holidays in England and Wales, and St Andrew’s Day only became a holiday in Scotland in 2007.
St Patrick's Day celebrations in the US
Curiously, though, St Patrick’s Day is observed most religiously and raucously in places far from Ireland, and many of the traditions associated with it today, including parades, originated abroad. While the first St Patrick’s Day parade in Ireland didn’t happen until 1903, a large parade took place in Boston, USA on 17 March 1737.
On St Patrick’s Day 1762, Irish soldiers marched through New York wearing green and
playing Irish songs. Now NYC hosts the world’s biggest Paddy’s Day parade, with
150,000 people celebrating their Irish heritage by marching along Manhattan's Fifth
Avenue, past St Patrick’s Cathedral, watched by 2 million more.
In Chicago they dye the river green. The date is a national holiday in Newfoundland and Labrador, and massive Paddy’s Day parades take place elsewhere across the Americas from Montreal to Buenos Aires. In Mexico, the day is used to honour Batallon de San Patricio (Saint Patrick's Battalion), a unit of mainly Irish soldiers that fought against the US in the Mexican–American War.
St Patrick's Day celebrations in the rest of the world
In Europe, large St Pat’s Day festivities happen from London to Munich, and cities in
Australia and New Zealand celebrate the date by turning local landmarks – such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Auckland Sky Tower – green.
On Montserrat, a 10-day festival takes place around St Patrick’s Day, commemorating a slave uprising that happened on the Caribbean island on 17 March 1768 (a date chosen by rebel leaders because they knew Anglo-Irish plantation owners would be celebrating and distracted). And in Nigeria, a country that consumes more Guinness than Ireland and also claims St Patrick as its patron saint, 17 March is a national feast day.
Top image: Spectators dressed as leprechauns attend St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin (credit: PETER MUHLY/AFP via Getty Images)
