St Patrick’s Day falls on 17 March, the traditional date of Patrick’s death. It is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland, and it is celebrated more widely around the world than any other national day.
Patrick was British
This surprises people on both sides of the Irish Sea. Patrick was born in Roman Britain around AD 385 — the exact location is disputed, with claims in Wales, Cumbria and Scotland — to a Romano-British family. His father was a deacon and a local official.
At sixteen he was captured by Irish raiders and enslaved, and spent six years herding sheep in Ireland. He escaped, made his way home, trained as a cleric, and then deliberately returned to the country that had taken him, as a missionary.
His own Confessio survives, one of the earliest documents written in Ireland, and it is a strikingly humble piece of writing by a man who describes himself as uneducated and a sinner.
The legends
- The shamrock — Patrick is said to have used the three-leaved clover to explain the Trinity. The story is not recorded until over a thousand years after his death.
- Driving out the snakes — entirely mythical, and easily disposed of: post-glacial Ireland never had any snakes. The story is generally read as a metaphor for displacing pagan belief.
Green, and blue
The colour associated with Patrick was originally blue — “St Patrick’s blue” still appears in Irish state regalia and on the presidential standard. Green took over in the eighteenth century, through its association with Irish nationalism, the shamrock and the “Emerald Isle”.
The American amplification
The modern celebration was largely built by the Irish diaspora rather than in Ireland. Irish emigrants to America — particularly after the Famine of the 1840s — used the day to assert identity and political presence in cities that were often hostile to them.
The first parades were held in America, not Ireland. Boston claims 1737 and New York 1762, both long before Dublin, whose first modern parade came in 1931. Chicago dyes its river green; New York’s parade draws well over a million spectators.
Ireland eventually took the model back. Until the 1970s Irish pubs were legally closed on 17 March, the day being a religious observance. The state built a multi-day festival in Dublin from the 1990s, explicitly for tourism, and it now draws hundreds of thousands.
In Northern Ireland
More complicated, and worth understanding. The day has historically been marked mainly by the nationalist community, and celebrations in Belfast were for years a flashpoint. Considerable effort has gone into making the Belfast events cross-community, with mixed but improving success.
In Britain
Not a public holiday, but widely marked — there are large Irish-descended populations in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow, and London holds a substantial parade and festival in Trafalgar Square. Pubs across Britain do a great deal of Guinness, and a fair amount of it is drunk by people with no Irish connection whatsoever.