I’ll be honest…back home in the South, we don’t really get too excited about St. Patrick’s Day. I’m not sure why, but there’s not really a lot of celebrations, you sure don’t see many parades and most folks certainly aren’t pretending to be Irish for the day. I think the South is missing out!
While writing this blog, I got a little schooling about St. Paddy. Turns out, he was a real guy and actually lived in the 4th century, raised in Roman Britain by a wealthy family. When he was a teenager, he was kidnapped and taken to Ireland as a slave. Patrick says God came to him in a dream and told him to escape back to Britain. When he returned home, he began studying to become a priest. Somewhere around 432, he became a bishop and returned to Ireland. There he famously used the shamrock to explain the Christian doctrine of the Trinity to the Irish. He died on March 17, 461, which is why St. Patrick’s Day is always on 3/17.
Today, St. Pat’s Day is a public holiday in Ireland and Northern Ireland and is celebrated around the world. Communities with large Irish Catholic populations seem to have some of the bigger celebrations. New York City’s first St. Paddy’s Day parade was held on March 17, 1762 by Irish soldiers in the British Army. The parades were held as political and social statements because of unfair Irish immigrants. In recent years, NYC’s parade has grown to 1.5 miles long and is the largest in the world!
Celebrating our first St. Patrick’s Day (ever) we joined in with the festivities in downtown Albany. We were treated to a sea of green garb wearing drunk wasted people college students as we drove into the North Pearl Street viewing area by accident. It took a few minutes, but we were able to find a parking spot a few blocks away from State Street. The route seemed a little calmer there and was filled with mostly families and generally less drunk looking people.
The parade lasted about 1.5 hours and it was one of the most interesting we’ve seen. Growing up in the conservative South, we sort of forget that people are a lot more laid back about alcohol up here. It just didn’t cross our minds that we should accessorize with a case of Guinness at a public parade. Now we know better for next year! Even the dogs brought their own beverages!
I’m a people watcher…you can just sit me in a corner and I’ll totally entertain myself watching what walks by. As you can imagine, I was in hog heaven just waiting for the parade to start!
The parade was different from most we’ve seen in the South. It seem to lack the traditional parade floats and the overflow of high school marching bands…plus, no one was throwing candy. Honestly, I thought one of the weirdest things is that everyone walked. The fire fighters, the police, the politicians and a good handful of drunk people who just felt like joining in on the fun. Ironically enough, the parade led with a bunch of horses.
Our first St. Patrick’s Day parade was busting at the seams with bagpipers! The music was cool to hear, but my guess is that there were probably a lot of cold hineys during that parade!
