Real Talk!

Wherever you go and whatever you do,
May the luck of the Irish be there with you.

St. Patrick is believed to have driven the snakes from Ireland and used a shamrock to convert the heathens. The modern holiday, March 17th, is based on the original Christian saint's feast day, which is also thought to be the date of his death in the fifth century.

In 1737, Irish immigrants in the United States began observing the holiday in Boston. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place in the United States- when Irish soldiers, serving the military marched through New York City in 1762. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for thousands of years.

My grandmother said St. Patrick's Day was a day for pinching folks that were not wearing green.

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, sometimes with potatoes.

Up until the mid-nineteenth century, most Irish immigrants in America were members of the Protestant middle class. The Great Potato Famine of 1845 brought nearly a million starving, poor, uneducated, Catholic Irish to America. The Protestant majority made fun of the immigrants, who were frowned upon for their religious beliefs and funny accents. These new Irish Americans had trouble finding even menial jobs.

Newspapers painted them as drunken disorderlies and ran cartoons depicting the Irish as chimps.

It didn’t take long before the Irish recognized that by virtue of their great numbers, they could wield significant political power. The annual St. Patrick's Day parades became a show of strength for Irish Americans and were suddenly an important event for political candidates.

The 2003 U.S. census counted 34 Million Americans with Irish ancestry, which is almost 9 times the population of the Emerald Isle itself.