14 Facts to Help Improve Your St. Patrick’s Day Trivia

On March 17, everybody in America becomes Irish for a day. A religious day in Ireland, drinking a pint or two to celebrate really began here in the U.S. Here are some things you may not have known about one of America’s favorite holidays and the man it celebrates.

1. St. Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland, was born Maewyn Succat in Great Britain, near Kilkenny, Scotland. At 16, he was kidnapped and sold as a slave in Ireland. He escaped after six years, entered the monastery, became a priest, and returned years later to spread Christianity in Ireland.
2. Although everyone wears green on St. Patrick’s Day, his color, and the one most associated with the holiday until the 19th century, was blue.
3. Although generally accepted and widely known as St. Patrick, he has never received formal canonization by a Pope.
4. The legend of St. Patrick says that he drove the snakes from Ireland. While it’s true there are no snakes indigenous to Ireland, the snakes of the myth more likely symbolize the Pagan beliefs held by most in that country before the arrival of St. Patrick.
5. March 17 does not celebrate St. Patrick’s birthday. No one really knows upon which day he was born, but it is generally accepted by historians that he died on March 17, 460 A.D.
6. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in Boston in 1737. Irish soldiers serving in the English army, missing their home, organized the parade.
7. The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York has been held every year since 1762.
8. Boston still hosts one of the largest parades in America. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Kansas City also host very popular parades.
9. The city of Chicago turns the river that runs through it green to celebrate the day.
10. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade held in Dublin was in 1931.
11. In Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day is a religious holiday to celebrate Lent. In fact, pubs in Ireland were actually closed on March 17 until the 1970s.
12. More than 33 million people in the U.S. claim Irish heritage. There are only about 4.4 million living in Ireland.
13. Although many people celebrate the day with a pint and corned beef and cabbage, that is almost exclusively an Irish-American dish. Corned beef was inexpensive, and probably the only meat poor Irish immigrants could afford.
14.  A popular Irish toast on St Patrick’s Day, is “may the roof above us never fall in, and may we friends beneath it never fall out.”