St Patrick’s Day is celebrated each year on the 17th of March to commemorate St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.

What was once a religious holiday has become an international celebration of Ireland, our culture and our history. In Ireland and beyond, the day is marked through parades, music, Irish dancing, traditional Irish food and wearing the colour green!

The history of St Patrick’s Day

St Patrick himself was born in a village in Roman Britain in the fifth century. He was reportedly kidnapped by Irish pirates as a teenager and enslaved in Ireland, where he took care of animals and learned the Irish language.

After escaping and training as a priest, he returned to Ireland to convert the Irish to Christianity. He used a three-leaf shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to Irish pagans.

In Ireland, St Patrick’s Day was initially a religious feast day, and early celebrations centred around dances, dinners and concerts. The traditional parade is thought to have originated in the United States by Irish emigrants honouring their heritage. One of the first recorded parades took place in New York City in 1762, and the first parade in Ireland itself was held in Waterford in 1903.

How is St Patrick’s Day celebrated in Ireland?

The biggest celebration is in Dublin, with a three-day festival that includes the St Patrick’s Day Parade. This parade welcomes over 500,000 attendees each year, and the participants include marching bands, charities, cultural organisations and youth groups. Other major festivals occur in Cork, where Irish folk music, dancing and storytelling are enjoyed at “An Céilí Mór”, and in Galway, Limerick, Kilkenny and Dingle.

Those with enough “luck of the Irish” to experience St Patrick’s Day on the Emerald Isle can expect to enjoy live performances of Irish folk music featuring instruments like the tin whistle, fiddle, bodhrán and harp – accompanied by Irish dancing such as the step dance, the sean-nós dance or the céilí dance!

In Ireland, St Patrick’s Day is a national public holiday, meaning banks, government offices and many businesses close. Many shops, pubs and tourist attractions remain open, especially in major cities.

Wearing green on St Patrick’s Day

In Ireland, it is considered bad luck not to wear the colour green on St Patrick’s Day! Superstition dictates that leprechauns will pinch those who go without green clothes.

The colour green has political and religious connotations in Ireland: it is one of three colours that make up the national flag, along with white and orange, symbolising Catholicism.

Of course, it is also associated with the three-leaf shamrock and Ireland’s lush landscapes.

St Patrick’s Day food and drink

A traditional dish eaten on St Patrick’s Day, especially in the United States, is bacon and cabbage. Irish stew, soda bread, colcannon and coddle are other popular meals cooked by Irish families at home and abroad.

While St Patrick’s Day was once a “dry holiday” owing to its religious significance, today it is traditionally celebrated with pints of Guinness, cider or some Irish whiskey. A famous custom, known as “drowning the shamrock”, involves dropping a shamrock into the last glass of whiskey and drinking it during a toast to the saint.

St Patrick’s Day around the world

St Patrick’s Day is widely recognised throughout the United States as a celebration of Irish and Irish-American culture.

The biggest St Patrick’s Day parade in the world is in New York City. Elsewhere in the States, the Chicago River is dyed green with an eco-friendly powder, an event that dates back to 1962. Large celebrations are also found in cities such as Boston, Philadelphia and Savannah – in the latter, St Patrick’s Day is a legal holiday!

In Europe, the Mayor of London holds a large parade on Trafalgar Square, and Germany hosts St Patrick’s Day events in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. The oldest and biggest St Patrick’s Day parade in Asia is in Tokyo, Japan, and Irish communities across Australia host parades, picnics and concerts to mark the occasion.

Since 2010, famous landmarks around the world have been lit up in green on St Patrick’s Day by Tourism Ireland and in collaboration with Irish Embassies across the globe.

So far, over 300 landmarks in 50 countries have “gone green” on the 17 March, from ancient monuments such as the Colosseum in Rome to iconic artworks like the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Other locations have included the London Eye, the Great Wall of China, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Pyramids of Giza and the Eiffel Tower.