St. Patrick’s Day Green River

Good morning my fellow Rotarians.  With one of the most celebrated holidays around the world is upon us, so I thought I’d share some fun facts regarding St. Patrick’s Day…

It started as a religious holiday in honor of St. Patrick, a patron saint who according to legend, was credited for driving all the snakes off of the island of Ireland in the mid 300’s AD.  Around 400 AD St Patrick introduced Christianity to the Irish people and March 17th is the date of his death.   

It’s the one day when “everyone” is Irish, or at least they act like they are.   The last US census showed that nearly 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry and yet the country today only has 4.1 mil people.  

This holiday has been celebrated for over 1000 years in Ireland and the first US celebratoin was started by Irish immigrants with a parade in Boston, MA in 1737.  

As a church holiday St Patrick’s Day has been celebrated in Ireland since the 1700’s.  In 1996 the city of Dublin started a St Patrick’s Day Festival, a 5-day event that last year had nearly one million people attend from around the world.  The festival is designed to showcase Ireland’s culture and to spur economic development.  Ireland encourages people of Irish decent to return to their homeland during the month of March each year.

The shortest St Patrick's Day parade in the world takes place between two pubs in a tiny Irish village. In the town of Dripsey, County Cork (on SW coast), their parade only runs 100 yards from the Weigh Inn to the Lee Valley Inn.  The Postmaster Dermot O`Leary dresses up as St Patrick with 30 groups in the parade.

In the US…  Chicago dyes its river green, Indianapolis dyes its main canal green and Savannah dyes its downtown city fountains green.  At the University of Missouri in Rolla, Alumni paint 12 city blocks kelly green with mops and Seattle paints green stripes down the middle of their downtown streets.

Although Saint Patrick's Day has the color green as its theme, St Patrick’s original official ‘saint’ color was blue and at one time that was the official color associated with this holiday.

Corned beef and cabbage is the most common meal eaten in the US for St. Patrick's Day, even though historically this is an American (rather than a traditionally Irish) meal.

And finally, if you drive on St. Patrick's Day you are 20% more likely to be killed or injured in an alcohol-related crash than on other day of the year.  So, here’s my question, would it be more dangerous driving yourself, or riding with an Irish driver???  Your call! 

And there you have it, our St Paddy’s Day Bottom of the News!  A top O the morning to ya, on this Friday, March 16, 2012.   ###