St. Patrick’s Day is Today. While Not so Big Around Here, it’s Celebrated With Gusto Elsewhere, including My Hometown of Syracuse, N.Y.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, celebrating, as it were, the wearin’ of the green. If you grew up in an Irish cultural setting like myself, you wear something green on this day, or be subjected to being pinched by your spouse, sibling, or a fellow Irishmen. You might also find yourself imaging Leprechaun’s on your bedpost, or searching the grass for three-leaf clovers.

It goes without saying, my lads and lassies that on this day everyone, it seems, wants to be Irish, whatever their heritage. You might also be tempted to wear a green carnation, or a badge reading, “Kiss Me I’m Irish.” So where did all this folklore come from, you might ask, using your finest Irish brogue? Well, as an Irish storyteller or two might muse, such as James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Jonathon Swift, or Samuel Beckett, it’s a long story, perhaps best enjoyed over a dark cup of coffee, a tall glass of Guinness, or a shot of Jamison.

Aye, as the story goes, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated annually on March 17, the anniversary of his death in the 5th Century. The Irish – those folks who live on the Emerald Isle – have observed this day as a religious holiday for more than 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.

For those of you who are perhaps outside the reaches of the Roman Catholic Church, Saint Patrick  is the patron saint of Ireland and its national apostle. Born in Roman Britain, he was kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave at 16. He later escaped, but returned to Ireland and was credited with bringing Christianity to its people.

In the centuries following Patrick’s death (believed to have been on March 17, 493), 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, to the Irish people.

Since around the ninth or 10th century, people in Ireland have been observing a Roman Catholic feast day honoring 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 the Spanish colony of 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, 1762 to honor the Irish patron saint. Enthusiasm for the St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York City, Chicago and Boston and other early American cities only grew from there.

Over the next decades, 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 were also used in the Scottish and British armies) and drums.

In 1851, several New York Irish Aid societies decided to unite their parades to form one official New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Today, the New York City 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 1.75-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.

There are more than 100 St. Patrick’s Day parades held across the United States, including the two most famous ones in New York City and Boston. Not to be outdone, Chicago not only holds a parade but it throws paint into the Chicago River, turning it green as it wends its way through the Downtown Loop.

Traditions abound in smaller cities as well. Where I grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., while attending St. Patrick’s High School, St. Paddies Day, as we called it, was a sort of, kind of, Cause Celebre, in that our high jinks back in the late 1960s and early 1970s sometimes got us in to a wee bit of hot water. By today’s standards, what we did back then was pretty innocent, but not everyone thought so. My high school neighborhood was located in the West End of Syracuse in an area still known as Tipperary Hill.

There are any number of Irish pubs and bars in the district, and we would often try to convince a friend’s older brother, who might be working as a doorman at one of these establishments, to let us in, so we could enjoy the festivities. Or a girlfriend would nab her older sisters ID and we would slink into a corner market on the edge of town and buy beer to sooth our under aged thirsts. Tipperary Hill was made up mostly of Irish-Catholic families, and over the years there were battles between local residents and the police over a certain street light in the middle of the neighborhood.

The Irishmen, usually with some drink in them, would throw rocks at the signal light and break the top bulb, which universally is red. According to local lore, this went on for years until the authorities relented and switched the red and green globes. Now the signal on Coleman Avenue is the only light in America with the green on top – festooned with, what else, a Shamrock, no less.

When I was in high school, we continued a tradition of painting a green Shamrock under that same signal light. Nowadays, it’s a ceremony covered by local TV and news outlets. When we were kids it wasn’t anywhere near as celebrated. We had to purloin some green paint from who knows where, find some brushes and brooms, and run out between the traffic and apply the paint. The cops – and maybe some local thin skinned people – didn’t want us to decorate the street, but we did it anyways. I remember one year, painting the Shamrock in the snow. What a mess, but we didn’t care, we didn’t have school the next day. We had it off!

Enjoy St. Patrick’s Day by allowing yourself to be an Irish man or woman for one day. You will thank your stars and may be acquire some luck along the way – you know, kind of like ‘the luck of the Irish.’ Erin Go Bragh!

Source material: History. com https://www.history.com/topics/st-patricks-day/history-of-st-patricks-day, and the Kevin O’Dwyer’s memory bank. Find out more about St. Patrick’s Day in Syracuse, N.Y.: https://www.visitsyracuse.com/blog/post/st-patricks-day-in-syracuse/

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