On St. Patrick's Day We Can All be a Little Irish!

Even if you haven't a single drop of Irish ancestry, March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, has become a holiday for everyone to feel Irish. So for at least a day, you can put on something green, eat corned beef and cabbage, drink green beer, and watch or participate in a merry parade. If you are in a big city, perhaps the streets are repainted with green stripes or fountains (or even the Chicago River) are dyed green. But maybe, as genealogists, we should take a minute to determine exactly what really came from Ireland and what has been made more recently in America!

St. Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland

St. Patrick was a real person. He lived during the fifth century in Roman Britain where he was kidnapped by Irish pirates as a teenager. He was brought to Northern Ireland as a slave and forced to work as a shepherd. After escaping and fleeing back to England, he dreamed that his mission in life was to spread the word of God, so he entered a monastery, became a priest, returned to Ireland, and set about converting the mostly pagan population to Christianity. St. Patrick is believed to have died on 17 March 461, and his death date became a Roman Catholic feast day.

Legends grew up around this holy man, including that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland and that he taught lessons using shamrocks to illustrate the Holy Trinity.

St. Patrick chasing the snakes out of Ireland

(St. Patrick, 1872, Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003671796/.)

Facts:

1. Ireland never had any snakes!
2. Nowhere in any of Patrick's surviving writing is there any mention of shamrocks.
3. Corned beef and cabbage and green beer are NOT traditionally Irish. They are part of American Irish customs and were only adopted by the Irish in modern times to support tourism.
4. The word "shamrock" is English, not Irish. However, it comes from the Irish word seamróg, meaning "little clover," which is what a shamrock is.
5. The official color of Ireland was not green until the mid-1600s. Prior to that, the flag of Ireland was blue, honoring Henry VIII, who declared himself king of Ireland as well as England. It wasn't until 1641 and the Great Irish Rebellion of that year, as the Irish fought against the English, that the flag color was changed to green, and that color became a source of Irish pride.
6. Of course, we all love leprechauns, pots of gold, and rainbows; the gold and rainbows are real, but, alas, leprechauns are not.

St. Patrick's Day Parades

The Irish didn't begin the tradition of celebrating with parades. In fact, the first recorded parade to celebrate St. Patrick's life was held in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, in today's Florida, on 17 March 1601, organized by an Irish vicar. The tradition of large-city parades is entirely modern and appears to have begun in Boston, followed closely by a parade in New York City in the 1700s. Other cities soon caught the excitement. Parades grew in size and length during the following centuries, allowing Irish immigrants to show their strength and pride in their adopted country.

Ironically, in Ireland, St. Patrick's Day remained a religious holiday well into the twentieth century. It wasn't until 1995 that Ireland jumped on the tourist bandwagon that surrounded the day and began celebrating with parades and a secular holiday spirit.

St. Patrick's Day Food

If you want to be authentically Irish this Friday, here's what you can cook up:

1. Irish soda bread
2. Irish bacon and cabbage (the "real" version of corned beef and cabbage)
3. Irish stew (traditionally made with mutton and root vegetables)
4. Colcannon (cabbage and mashed potatoes)
5. Seafood chowder
6. Boxty (Irish potato pancakes)
7. Cottage or shepherd's pie

You can find recipes for all of these and more online by googling "St. Patrick's Day traditional food." 

And whether you are really Irish or just having a fun holiday on Friday, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Want to read more?

"History of St. Patrick's Day," History.com, originally published 27 October 2009, updated 22 February 2023,

https://www.history.com/topics/st-patricks-day/history-of-st-patricks-day

"St. Patrick's Day," revised and edited by Amy Tikkanen, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Saint-Patricks-Day

"Traditional Irish Food for St. Patrick's Day," by Sarah for Curious Cuisiniere, 11 November 2021,

https://www.curiouscuisiniere.com/irish-food-for-st-patricks-day/

Some free genealogy websites for Irish research:

• The National Archives of Ireland: https://genealogy.nationalarchives.ie/
• National Library of Ireland: https://www.nli.ie/
• General Register office of Ireland: https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/af7893-general-register-office/
• General Register Office of Northern Ireland: https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/services/go-groni-online
• Irish Genealogy: https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/
• Irish Ancestors: https://www.johngrenham.com
• FamilySearch Wiki: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Ireland_Genealogy