Skip to main content

Why Do We Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?

By Sandra Woodard, RAFT Membership & Green Room Associate

St. Patrick’s Day has been celebrated in Ireland for over 1,000 years, but it was mostly a religious celebration of the Saint’s life and deeds. Today, many people of Irish ancestry in the U.S., and many others who consider themselves “Irish for the Day” spend March 17th each year wearing green, watching parades and otherwise participating in this celebration of all things Irish.
          St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, brought Christianity to Ireland in about the early 5th century. Patrick was from a wealthy family which lived in Roman Britain. He was brought to Ireland as a slave at about age 16. Having spent about half dozen years there he finally made his way to freedom, eventually entered the Church of Rome, and was sent to Ireland as a bishop. There, he is credited with performing many baptisms, and converting people to the Catholic Church. St. Patrick is said to have used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity.
            There are many millions of people of Irish ancestry in the United States, as well as Canada, Australia, and England. During the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849, there was a blight of the potato crop in Ireland. Potatoes were the sole diet of millions of the Irish people, who subsisted on nothing else. When the potato crop failed for four years in a row, millions of people starved to death, or died of disease, such as cholera and typhoid, while many of the population emigrated away from Ireland to find work and a better life for themselves.
            In America discrimination was rampant, with many “Help Wanted Irish Need Not Apply” signs in business windows. Numerous Irish women and girls entered domestic service, and many men entered the police and firefighting forces.
            The first St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in New York City in 1762, before the famine. The participants were Irishmen serving in the British Armed forces. Today New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco all have St. Patrick’s Day parades. The U.S. state with the largest percentage of people of Irish ancestry is Massachusetts.
            One of Ireland’s biggest influences in the U.S. may be on our Country Western and Bluegrass music. The jigs and reels of Ireland were played in the rural South, and can still be heard today in their original form, as well as being a major influence on our popular music.
St. Paddy’s Day comes from the Irish name Padruig, or Patrick.

Irish and Irish immigrants of note include:

Art- Dale Chihouly
Music-Van Morrison, U-2, Thin Lizzie
Politics- Presidents John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan
Literature-W.B. Yeats, James Joyce
Playwright- George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde
Music and Entertainment- Riverdance, Celtic Woman, The Chieftains
Acting- Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Brenda Fricker, Aiden Quinn, Saoirse Ronannan 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Science fairs: Nurturing the 21st century thinker

3D Tessellation model A bespectacled 6th grader enthusiastically explains ‘efficiency of 3D space tessellations’ with myriad equations and handmade tessellation patterns to address the needs of the packaging, storing, shipping and construction industry. Another middle school student, was inspired by his little brother’s telescope and built a simple vacuum chamber using a PVC pipe with a microphone and a speaker on both ends to find out how sound travels on Mars! This 8th grader from Granada Islamic School used an oscilloscope his mother found at an auction to measure the sounds. “I poke around and find junk to build my projects. It’s fun.” Science projects today have become fun for many students as they use more hands on activities to experiment and understand concepts. These two middle school students were among 996 participants at the recent Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship , where RAFT was one of the special judges. Moenes Iskarous, President, S
18 comments
Read more

Plastic to art that’s fantastic!

With Valentine’s Day round the corner, one of RAFT ’s upcoming weekend workshops – ‘Shrink Art Fun’ shows you how to recycle plastic into awesome shrink art! This year learn how to make some meaningful gifts using donated plastic material, available at RAFT in the form of trays and take-out containers, thus preventing them from ending up in a landfill.  Shrink plastics encourage creativity, and can be used to supplement a variety of classroom activities.  Students can create models, manipulatives, and displays. They can make maps, pins, book report characters, and even cards!  But there is also a science behind this hands on art form! Says Instructor Georgina Patterson, who has been in the education field for 40 years, “The science behind the shrinkage process is a chemistry lesson in itself, and the excitement young children get when they watch the plastic change size in the oven is worth the effort!” The base material consists of thin, flexible polystyrene plastic (#6) sheets
3 comments
Read more

Thank Goodness for Moms!

Mother’s Day is a great time to recognize one of the most important educators in a student’s life—Mom! I’m so grateful for my own mother (now 91 years old) and all that she’s done for me over the years! She’s the one who gave me the courage to go to college (I’m the first in my family)! Though a mom myself and now a Yiayia (Greek for “grandma”), I often think about the lessons I learned from my mother and her generous love for family and friends. I say it’s truly fitting to celebrate all mothers! Throughout the world, people celebrate Mother’s Day on different days and in various forms. This year in the United States we honor mothers on Sunday, May 13 th . So just how did Mother’s Day begin? The American version of this holiday was created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914. Later on, Anna denounced the commercialization of Mother’s Day and spent a good portion of her later life trying to get it revoked, but it has stayed. Today we cont
1 comment
Read more