tich luy thang 3 Patrick '''' s Day

Saint Patrick's Day
Saint Patrick's Day 2004 in Cork, Ireland
Saint Patrick's Day (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig) is a yearly holiday celebrated on 17
March. It is named after Saint Patrick (circa AD 387–461), the most commonly
recognized of the patron saints of Ireland. It began as a purely Catholic holiday and
became an official feast day in the early 1600s. However, it has gradually become more
of a secular celebration of Ireland's culture.
It is a public holiday on the island of Ireland (both Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Ireland) and widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora in places such as Great Britain,
Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and Montserrat.
•
Saint Patrick
Main article: Saint Patrick
Little is known of Patrick's early life, though it is known that he was born in Roman
Britain in the fifth century, into a wealthy Romano-British family. His father and
grandfather were deacons in the Church. At the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish
raiders and taken captive to Ireland as a slave.
[1]
It is believed he was held somewhere on
the west coast of Ireland, possibly Mayo, but the exact location is unknown. According to
his Confession, he was told by God in a dream to flee from captivity to the coast, where
he would board a ship and return to Britain. Upon returning, he quickly joined the Church
in Auxerre in Gaul and studied to be a priest.
In 432, he again says that he was called back to Ireland, though as a bishop, to save the
Irish, and indeed he was successful at this, focusing on converting royalty and aristocracy
as well as the poor. Irish folklore tells that one of his teaching methods included using the
shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) to the
Irish people. After nearly thirty years of teaching and spreading God's Word he died on
17 March, 461 AD, and was buried at Downpatrick, so tradition says. Although there
were other more successful missions to Ireland from Rome, Patrick endured as the
principal champion of Irish Christianity and is held in esteem in the Irish Church.

Wearing of green
According to legend, Saint Patrick used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the
Holy Trinity to the pre-Christian Irish people.
Originally the colour associated with Saint Patrick was blue. However, over the years the
colour green and its association with Saint Patrick's day grew.
[2]
Green ribbons and
shamrocks were worn in celebration of St Patrick's Day as early as the 17th century.
[3]
He
is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the
pre-Christian Irish, and the wearing and display of shamrocks and shamrock-inspired
designs have become a ubiquitous feature of the day.
[4][5]
Then in the 1798 rebellion in
hopes of making a political statement Irish soldiers wore full green uniforms on 17 March
in hopes of catching attention with their unusual fashion gimmick.
[2]
The phrase "the
wearing of the green", meaning to wear a shamrock on one's clothing, derives from the
song of the same name.
History in Ireland
It is believed that Saint Patrick's Day has been celebrated in Ireland since before the
1600s. It was also believed to have served as a one-day break during Lent
[citation needed]
, the
forty day period of fasting. This would involve drinking alcohol; something which
became a tradition. Saint Patrick's feast day was finally placed on the universal liturgical
calendar in the Catholic Church due to the influence of the Waterford-born Franciscan
scholar Luke Wadding

[6]
in the early 1600s. Saint Patrick's Day thus became a holy day
of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. The church calendar avoids the observance
of saints' feasts during certain solemnities, moving the saint's day to a time outside those
periods. Saint Patrick's Day is very occasionally affected by this requirement – when 17
March falls during Holy Week. This happened in 1940 when Saint Patrick's Day was
observed on 3 April in order to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and again in 2008,
having been observed on 15 March. Saint Patrick's Day will not fall within Holy Week
again until 2160.
[7][8]
Traditional Saint Patrick's Day badges from the early 20th century, photographed at the
Museum of Country Life in County Mayo
In 1903, Saint Patrick's Day became an official public holiday in Ireland. This was thanks
to the Money Bank (Ireland) Act 1903, an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament
introduced by the Irish MP James O'Mara.
[9]
O'Mara later introduced the law which
required that pubs be closed on 17 March after drinking got out-of-hand, a provision
which was repealed only in the 1970s. The first Saint Patrick's Day parade held in the
Irish Free State was held in Dublin in 1931 and was reviewed by the then Minister of
Defence Desmond Fitzgerald. Although secular celebrations now exist, the holiday
remains a religious observance in Ireland, for both the Roman Catholic Church and
Church of Ireland.
It was only in the mid-1990s that the Irish government began a campaign to use Saint
Patrick's Day to showcase Ireland and its culture.
[10]
The government set up a group called
St. Patrick's Festival, with the aim to:
— Offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebrations in
the world and promote excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity,

grassroots involvement, and marketing activity.
— Provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent, (and those
who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and
expressive celebrations.
— Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative,
professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal, as we approach the new
millennium.
[11]

The first Saint Patrick's Festival was held on 17 March, 1996. In 1997, it became a three-
day event, and by 2000 it was a four-day event. By 2006, the festival was five days long;
over 675,000 people attended the 2009 parade. Overall 2009's five day festival saw close
to one million visitors that took part in the festivities that included concerts, outdoor
theatre performances, and fireworks.
[12]
The topic of the 2004 St. Patrick's Symposium was "Talking Irish," during which the
nature of Irish identity, economic success, and the future were discussed. Since 1996,
there has been a greater emphasis on celebrating and projecting a fluid and inclusive
notion of "Irishness" rather than an identity based around traditional religious or ethnic
allegiance. The week around Saint Patrick's Day usually involves Irish language speakers
using more Irish during seachtain na Gaeilge ("Irish Week").
[citation needed]
As well as Dublin, many other Irish cities, towns and villages hold their own parades and
festivals, including Cork, Belfast, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford.
The biggest celebrations outside Dublin are in Downpatrick, County Down, where Saint
Patrick is rumoured to be buried following his death on 17 March, 461. In 2004,
according to Down District Council, the week-long St. Patrick's Festival had over 2,000
participants and 82 floats, bands, and performers, and was watched by over 30,000
people.
[citation needed]

The shortest St Patrick's Day parade in the world takes place in Dripsey, Cork. The
parade lasts just 100 yards and travels between the village's two pubs.
[13]
Sign on a beam in the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin, a commercial museum, promoting
the drinking of Guinness stout on St. Patrick's Day.
Christian leaders in Ireland have expressed concern about the secularisation of St
Patrick's Day. Writing in The Word magazine's March 2007 issue, Fr. Vincent Twomey
stated that, "it is time to reclaim St Patrick's Day as a church festival". He questioned the
need for "mindless alcohol-fuelled revelry" and concluded that, "it is time to bring the
piety and the fun together".
[14]
Sports events
• The Ulster Schools Cup final
[15]
, Leinster Schools Rugby Senior Cup final and
Munster Schools Rugby Senior Cup finals all take place annually on St. Patrick's
Day.
• The All-Ireland Club Football and All-Ireland Club Hurling championships finals
are held annually in Croke Park on St Patrick's Day.
• The Interprovincial Championship in both Gaelic Football and Hurling were held
in Croke Park from u to and including 1986 and in 1991.
• In 2007 the Ireland cricket team famously beat Pakistan in the 2007 Cricket
World Cup by 3 wickets to claim their first ever Cricket World Cup win and
knocking Pakistan, the fourth ranked team in the world out of the World Cup.
Outside Ireland
In Argentina
In Canada
In Great Britain
2006 St Patrick's Day celebrations in Trafalgar Square London
In Great Britain, the Queen Mother used to present bowls of shamrock flown over from

Ireland to members of the Irish Guards, a regiment in the British Army consisting
primarily of soldiers from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Irish
Guards still wear shamrock on this day, flown in from Ireland.
[23]
The horse racing at the Cheltenham Festival attracts large numbers of Irish people, both
residents of Britain and many who travel from Ireland, and usually coincides with Saint
Patrick's Day.
[24]
Birmingham holds the largest Saint Patrick's Day parade in Britain with a massive city
centre parade
[25]
over a two mile (3 km) route through the city centre. The organisers
describe it as the third biggest parade in the world after Dublin and New York.
[26]
London, since 2002, has had an annual Saint Patrick's Day parade which takes place on
weekends around the 17th, usually in Trafalgar Square. In 2008 the water in the Trafalgar
Square fountains was dyed green.
Liverpool with its geographical location as a major port leading to the Irish Sea has the
largest per-capita Irish population of any English city.
[citation needed]
This has led to a long
standing celebration on St Patrick's Day in terms of music, cultural events and the parade.
Manchester hosts a two week Irish festival in the weeks prior to St Patrick's Day. The
festival includes an Irish Market based at the city's town hall which flies the Irish
tricolour opposite the Union Flag, a large parade (claiming to be the biggest outside of
Dublin and New York based on entrant and float numbers) as well as a large number of
cultural and learning events throughout the two-week period. The festival promotes itself
as the largest in the UK.
[27]
The Scottish town of Coatbridge, where the majority of the town's population are of Irish

descent,
[citation needed]
also has a St. Patrick's Day Festival which includes celebrations and
parades in the town centre.
Glasgow began an annual Saint Patrick's Day parade and festival in 2007.
In South Korea
In New Zealand
Saint Patrick's Day is widely celebrated in New Zealand - green items of clothing are
traditionally worn and the streets are often filled with revellers drinking and making
merry from early afternoon until late at night.
The Irish made a large impact in New Zealand's social, political and education systems,
owing to the large numbers that emigrated there during the 1800s and Saint Patrick's Day
is seen as a day to celebrate individual links to Ireland and Irish heritage.
In the United States
The north White House fountain was dyed green in celebration of Saint Patrick's Day on
17 March, 2009.
Early celebrations
Irish Society of Boston organized what was not only the first Saint Patrick's Day Parade
in the colonies but the first recorded Saint Patrick's Day Parade in the world on 18 March
1737.
[28][unreliable source?]
The first parade in Ireland was not until the 1931 parade in Dublin.
This parade in Boston involved Irish immigrant workers marching to make a political
statement about how they were not happy with their low social status and their inability
to obtain jobs in America. New York's first Saint Patrick's Day Parade was held on 17
March 1762 by Irish soldiers in the British Army.The first celebration of Saint Patrick's
Day in New York City was held at the Crown and Thistle Tavern in 1766, the parades
were held as political and social statements because the Irish immigrants were being
treated unfairly.
[29]

In 1780, General George Washington, who commanded soldiers of
Irish descent in the Continental Army, allowed his troops a holiday on 17 March “as an
act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence."
[30][31]
This event became
known as The St. Patrick's Day Encampment of 1780.
[28][unreliable source?]
Postcard postmarked 1912 in the United States
Irish patriotism in New York City continued to soar and the parade in New York City
continued to grow. Irish aid societies were created like Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and
the Hibernian Society and they marched in the parades too. Finally when many of these
aid societies joined forces in 1848 the parade became not only the largest parade in the
United States but one of the largest in the world.
[32]
Customs today
Today, Saint Patrick's Day is widely celebrated in America by Irish and non-Irish alike.
Many people, regardless of ethnic background, wear green-coloured clothing and items.
Traditionally, those who are caught not wearing green are pinched affectionately.
[33]
Seattle and other cities paint the traffic stripe of their parade routes green. Chicago dyes
its river green and has done so since 1962 when sewer workers used green dye to check
for sewer discharges and had the idea to turn the river green for Saint Patrick's Day.
Originally 100 pounds of vegetable dye was used to turn the river green for a whole week
but now only forty pounds of dye is used and the colour only lasts for several hours.
[2]

Indianapolis also dyes its main canal green. Savannah dyes its downtown city fountains
green. Missouri University of Science and Technology - St Pat's Board Alumni paint 12
city blocks kelly green with mops before the annual parade.
[citation needed]

In Jamestown, New
York, the Chadakoin River (a small tributary that connects Conewango Creek with its
source at Chautauqua Lake) is dyed green each year
The Chicago River in Chicago, Illinois on Saint Patrick's Day.
In the Northeastern United States, peas are traditionally planted on Saint Patrick's Day.
[34]
Parades
Sports-related celebrations
Baseball
Basketball