Happy St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day is upon us, and this is one day that makes EVERYONE Irish. From bagels dyed green, to rivers also. Everyone celebrates. So sit back, lift a pint, and enjoy these St. Patrick's Day facts I dug up for everyone to enjoy.

In Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day, people traditionally wear a small bunch of shamrocks on their jackets or caps. Children wear orange, white and green badges, and women and girls wear green ribbons in their hair.

Many cities have a St. Patrick’s Day parade. Dublin, the capital of Ireland, has a huge St. Patrick’s Day festival from March 15-19, which features a parade, family carnivals, treasure hunt, dance, theatre and more. In North American, parades are often held on the Sunday before March 17. Some paint the yellow street lines green for the day! In Chicago, the Chicago River is dyed green with a special dye that only lasts a few hours. There has been a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston, Massachusetts since 1737. Montreal is home to Canada’s longest running St. Patrick’s Day parade, which began in 1824.

The Irish flag is green, white and orange. The green symbolizes the people of the south, and orange, the people of the north. White represents the peace that brings them together as a nation.

On St. Patrick's Day this Friday, some revelers will raise a pint of stout and wish their companions "Slainté!"—the Irish word, pronounced SLAN-cha, for "health." The toast may brim with scientific truth. At a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida, three years ago, researchers reported that Guinness may be as effective as daily aspirin in reducing the blood clots that cause heart attacks. (The benefit derives from antioxidants, which the researchers said reduce cholesterol deposits on arterial walls. The compounds are found in dark Irish stouts but not their paler cousins.)

Irish brigands kidnapped St. Patrick at 16 and brought him to Ireland. He was sold as a slave in the county of Antrim and served in bondage for six years until he escaped to Gaul, in present-day France. He later returned to his parents' home in Britain, where he had a vision that he would preach to the Irish. After 14 years of study, Patrick returned to Ireland, where he built churches and spread the Christian faith for some 30 years.

In the United States, it's customary to wear green on St. Patrick's Day. But in Ireland the color was long considered to be unlucky, says Bridget Haggerty, author of The Traditional Irish Wedding and the Irish Culture and Customs Web site.

Colonial New York City hosted the first official St. Patrick's Day parade in 1762, when Irish immigrants in the British colonial army marched down city streets. In subsequent years Irish fraternal organizations also held processions to St. Patrick's Cathedral. The various groups merged sometime around 1850 to form a single, grand parade.

The first St. Patrick's Day in America was celebrated in Boston in 1737.

The tradition known as "drowning the shamrock" comes from the Irish superstition that if you leave a shamrock floating on the top of your drink and then drink it, you will have a year of good luck and good fortune.


St. Patrick's Day in Ireland- In the recent past, Saint Patrick's Day was celebrated only as a religious holiday. It became a public holiday only in 1903. The life of Saint Patrick. is celebrated and taught to the masses. People learn from his teachings and try to do as much good for the people around them as Saint Patrick did in his adult life.

How can you tell if an Irishman is having a good time? He’s Dublin over with laughter.

What's Irish and stays out all night? Patty O’Furinture

Since 1980, the Irish president has presented a shamrock to the U.S. President in a White House ceremony held annually around St. Patrick's Day.

U.S. Presidents with Irish ancestry include John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. In Canada, statesman Thomas D'Arcy McGee and recent Prime Minister Brian Mulroney were of Irish descent.

St. Patrick is also supposed to have rid Ireland - specifically County Donegal - of a fierce lake monster. After he had killed it, the blood turned the lake red and so since then the lake has been known as Red Lake or Lough Derg. It is now a pilgrimage place and many people go there between 1 June and 15 August in the fond hope that the journey will rid them of all their sins.

St. Patrick built the first church in Ireland at Mag-inis.

St. Patrick ordered that after death he be buried wherever the oxen pulling his funeral cart stopped. They reportedly didn't go further than Downpatrick, so he's buried somewhere there.