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March 18, 2022

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HOW ST. PATRICK'S DAY TOOK ON NEW LIFE IN AMERICA

St. Patrick may be the patron saint of Ireland, but many St. Patrick’s Day
traditions were born in the United States.
 * Author:
   Christopher Klein
 * Publish date:
   Mar 17, 2022

Popperfoto/Getty Images

St. Patrick may be the patron saint of Ireland, but many St. Patrick’s Day
traditions were born in the United States.

 * 
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 * 
 * 



Every March 17, the United States becomes an emerald country for a day.
Americans wear green clothes and drink green beer. Green milkshakes, bagels and
grits appear on menus. In a leprechaun-worthy shenanigan, Chicago even dyes its
river green.

Revelers from coast to coast celebrate all things Irish by hoisting pints of
Guinness and cheering bagpipers, step dancers and marching bands parading
through city streets. These familiar annual traditions weren’t imported from
Ireland, however. They were made in America.



WATCH: Saint Patrick: The Man, The Myth on HISTORY Vault

A St. Patrick's Day parade, circa 1860s. 

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

In contrast to the merry-making in the United States, March 17 has been more
holy day than holiday in Ireland. Since 1631, St. Patrick’s Day has been a
religious feast day to commemorate the anniversary of the 5th-century death of
the missionary credited with spreading Christianity to Ireland. For several
centuries, March 17 was a day of solemnity in Ireland with Catholics attending
church in the morning and partaking of modest feasts in the afternoon. There
were no parades and certainly no emerald-tinted food products, particularly
since blue, not green, was the traditional color associated with Ireland’s
patron saint prior to the 1798 Irish Rebellion.






Boston has long staked claim to the first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the
American colonies. On March 17, 1737, more than two dozen Presbyterians who
emigrated from the north of Ireland gathered to honor St. Patrick and form the
Charitable Irish Society to assist distressed Irishmen in the city. The oldest
Irish organization in North America still holds an annual dinner every St.
Patrick’s Day.

Historian Michael Francis, however, unearthed evidence that St. Augustine,
Florida, may have hosted America's first St. Patrick’s Day celebration. While
researching Spanish gunpowder expenditure logs, Francis found records that
indicate cannon blasts or gunfire were used to honor the saint in 1600 and that
residents of the Spanish garrison town processed through the streets in honor of
St. Patrick the following year, perhaps at the behest of an Irish priest living
there. 



Ironically, it was a band of Redcoats who started the storied green tradition of
America’s largest and longest St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1762 when Irish-born
soldiers serving in the British Army marched through lower Manhattan to a St.
Patrick’s Day breakfast at a local tavern. The March 17 parades by the Irish
through the streets of New York City raised the ire of nativist, anti-Catholic
mobs who started their own tradition of “paddy-making” on the eve of St.
Patrick’s Day by erecting effigies of Irishmen wearing rags and necklaces of
potatoes with whiskey bottles in their hands until the practice was banned in
1803.




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After Irish Catholics flooded into the country in the decade following the
failure of Ireland’s potato crop in 1845, they clung to their Irish identities
and took to the streets in St. Patrick’s Day parades to show strength in numbers
as a political retort to nativist “Know-Nothings.”

“Many who were forced to leave Ireland during the Great Hunger brought a lot of
memories, but they didn’t have their country, so it was a celebration of being
Irish,” says Mike McCormack, national historian for the Ancient Order of
Hibernians. “But there was also a bit of defiance because of the bigotry by the
Know-Nothings against them.”

McCormack says attitudes toward the Irish began to soften after tens of
thousands of them served in the Civil War. “They went out as second-class
citizens but came back as heroes,” he says. As the Irish slowly assimilated into
American culture, those without Celtic blood began to join in St. Patrick’s Day
celebrations.



The meal that became a St. Patrick’s Day staple across the country—corned beef
and cabbage—was also an American innovation. While ham and cabbage was eaten in
Ireland, corned beef proved a cheaper substitute for impoverished immigrants.
McCormack says corned beef became a staple of Irish-Americans living in the
slums of lower Manhattan who purchased leftover provisions from ships returning
from the tea trade in China.

“When ships came into South Street Seaport, many women would run down to the
port hoping there was leftover salted beef they could get from the ship’s cook
for a penny a pound,” McCormack says. “It was the cheapest meat they could
find.” The Irish would boil the beef three times—the last time with cabbage—to
remove some of the brine.

While St. Patrick’s Day evolved in the 20th century into a party day for
Americans of all ethnicities, the celebration in Ireland remained solemn. The
Connaught Telegraph reported of Ireland’s commemorations on March 17, 1952: “St.
Patrick’s Day was very much like any other day, only duller.” For decades, Irish
laws prohibited pubs from opening on holy days such as March 17. Until 1961, the
only legal place to get a drink in the Irish capital on St. Patrick’s Day was
the Royal Dublin Dog Show, which naturally attracted those with only a passing
canine interest.

The party atmosphere only spread to Ireland after the arrival of television when
the Irish could see all the fun being had across the ocean. “Modern Ireland took
a cue from America,” McCormack says. The multi-day St. Patrick’s Day Festival,
launched in Dublin in 1996, now attracts one million people each year.



The Irish are now adopting St. Patrick’s Day traditions from Irish America such
as corned beef and cabbage, McCormack says. There are some American traditions,
however, that might not catch on in Ireland, such as green Guinness. As
McCormack says, “St. Patrick never drank green beer."





READ MORE: When America Despised the Irish: The 19th Century's Refugee Crisis



By
Christopher Klein
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