Irish pride: St. Patrick's Day celebrations take place around the world

St. Patrick’s Day – a day to wear green (leprechaun hats, perhaps) and gulp green-coloured beer, or a pint of Guinness, at a local pub – unfolded Sunday (March 17) as part of global celebration of Irish arts, culture and heritage.

Some 70 million people claim links to Ireland, says Tourism Ireland, and every St. Patrick’s Day, Irish music and dance are synonymous with events around the world.

In Ireland, the day isn’t just a celebration of the patron saint, it’s also a demonstration of the pride of being Irish and a source of joy that helps to kick off the spring season.

In Dublin, the theme for the national St. Patrick's Festival is SPRÉACH or Spark in Irish, driven by values of joy, community, diversity and sustainability.

As shared in a news release, the iconic parade featured more pageants, more participants than ever before.

With half a million spectators lining this year's route, the parade encompassed 18 pageants and performance showpieces, 14 marching bands from across Ireland, North America and France and over 4,000 participants.

While the Dublin St. Patrick's Day parade is the biggest and most famous, there are parades and festivals in most cities on the island of Ireland.

Armagh, Belfast, Cork, Derry-Londonderry, Killarney, Waterford, Kilkenny, Limerick, Enniskillen and Sligo all staged St Patrick's Festivals over the weekend.

Highlights include a huge marching band jamboree in Limerick, where bands from the USA wow spectators; a music trail in the medieval city of Kilkenny; candle-light concerts in Killarney; an urban run in Belfast and a 'Sunrise with St Patrick' event in Armagh's Home of St Patrick Festival, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland and where St. Patrick began his mission.

While St Patrick's Day is the highlight of Ireland's social calendar, bringing the whole island to life with parades, music and green at every turn, it is also the time when nature is coming to life across the island.

Visitors can discover wildlife-rich landscapes dotted with cotton-white newborn lambs, walking festivals, beautiful gardens boasting floral collections, cozy pubs and fast changing weather that is known to bring rainbows galore.

People can catch them anywhere, from cities to coasts to wild mountain landscapes.

5 quirky facts about St. Patrick’s Day

1. Patrick wasn’t Irish

Patrick is thought to have originally come from either Wales or Scotland, where he was abducted at the age of 16 and brought to what is now Northern Ireland as a slave. He was sent to Slemish Mountain in County Antrim – still a popular pilgrimage spot to this day – to herd sheep. But after his escape, he had a vision which prompted him to return to Ireland to spread the word of Christianity. Patrick remained in Ireland for the rest of his life, preaching, baptizing, and founding schools, churches and monasteries before his death in County Down, on 17 March, AD 461.

2. Patrick isn‘t an official saint

The man behind Ireland’s national day is technically not a saint. Surprisingly, Patrick was never officially canonised as a saint by the Catholic Church. However, the lack of official sainthood is simply because there was no formal canonisation process in the 400s. In Patrick’s time saints were declared by popular acclamation. Calling him “St Patrick” is likely to have caught on over time because of his talents, gifts and holiness.

3. The first St Patrick’s Day parade

It’s actually the big centres of Irish immigration in Boston (1737) and New York (1762) that have the longest laid claims to holding the first St Patrick’s Day parade, though recent research has suggested the U.S. city of St Augustine in Florida had one in 1601. This is long before they started in Ireland itself – the first parade in the country was held in Waterford in 1903, while Dublin joined the club back in 1931.

4. St. Patrick’s colour is actually blue

Before green came on the scene, blue was the colour associated with St Patrick. The earliest depictions of Ireland’s patron saint show him clothed in blue garments, not green, and in fact when George III created a new order of chivalry for the Kingdom of Ireland in 1783 its official colour was a sky blue known as “St Patrick's Blue.” It’s thought that the shift to green happened over time because of Ireland’s nickname – the Emerald Isle, as well as the green in the Irish flag, the shamrock and the idea of the country’s 40 shades of lush green fields. Traditions like the wearing of green evolved over time.

5. Snakes? What snakes?

Among the many legends associated with St Patrick is that he stood on top a hillside and delivered a sermon that drove Ireland’s serpents into the sea. It’s true the island is snake-free, but the story is likely an allegory for Patrick eradicating paganism on the island. Research suggests snakes were never resident in the Emerald Isle in the first place. There are no signs of snakes in the country’s fossil record and water has surrounded Ireland since the last glacial period. Before that, the region was covered in ice and would have been too cold even for reptiles.

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