People across the United States have celebrated their Irish heritage at several major St Patrick’s Day parades on Saturday.
They are marking the holiday a day early at events that included a big anniversary in Savannah, Georgia, and honored a pioneering female business leader as grand marshal in New York.
The holiday commemorates Ireland’s patron saint and was popularized largely by Irish Catholic immigrants.
While St Patrick’s Day falls on March 17, some parades were moved up from Sunday, a day of worship for the Christian faithful.
Stewart Resmer and his wife, Barbara, enjoyed a hot cup of Irish Coffee with New York Governor Hochul at Rosie O’Gradys new location during the Wayne, New Jersey couple’s visit to Manhattan’s St Patrick’s Day Parade, which first began in 1762 – 14 years before the US Declaration of Independence – and is one of the world’s largest Irish heritage festivities.
The first parade was held in 1762 on lower Broadway by homesick Irish ex-patriots and Irish military serving with the British Army stationed in the colonies and New York City. This was the 263rd St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City.
However, according to the New York Historical Society Museum & Library, the first known reference to a St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the Big Apple is found in a 1756 issue of the “New-York-Post-Boy” newspaper.
This means that the parade has been a fixture in New York City for the past 262 years, with military units organizing the event for the first few years, according to NYC Saint Patrick’s Day Inc. It wasn’t until after the War of 1812 that Irish fraternal and benevolent societies took over hosting duties and sponsored the parade.
“Originally, the Irish societies joined together at their respective meeting places and moved in a procession toward Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan on Mott & Prince Streets where the Archbishop of New York would then address the crowd before revelers dispersed to celebrate,” NYC Saint Patrick’s Day Inc. describes.
St. Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland, is credited with bringing Christianity to the island and he has become so closely associated with Ireland, that St. Patrick’s Day has become a day of celebrating Irish heritage.
A popular legend suggests that St. Patrick would explain the concept of the Holy Trinity during his missionary travels with a shamrock — and through time the shamrock became a popular symbol of St. Patrick’s Day and Irish heritage.
The St. Patrick’s Day Parade has become one of the most beloved traditions of the Big Apple.
Megan Stransky of Houston and two relatives planned a Broadway weekend to coincide with the parade, seeing it as a prime opportunity to remember their family’s Irish roots and the traditions that helped shape their upbringing.
The event did not disappoint. “There is no comparison to any other parade or city that I’ve been to,” Stransky marveled, as she took in the bagpipers, bands, police and military contingents and more.
The grand marshal, Irish-born Heineken USA chief executive Maggie Timoney, is the first female head of a major US beer company.
At a pre-parade reception at New York’s mayoral residence, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee hailed the recognition for Timoney and noted some other causes for celebrating Irish American links this year, including Cork actor Cillian Murphy’s Best Actor Oscar win last weekend.
New York City has multiple parades on various dates around its five boroughs – including, on Sunday, the first St Patrick’s Day parade allowing LGBTQ+ groups to march on Staten Island.
Mayor Eric Adams last month announced the plan for the new, privately organized celebration, arranged after a local group had asked for years to join the borough’s decades-old parade.
That longstanding event, which does not allow groups to march under LGBTQ+ banners, happened earlier this month.
The Manhattan parade began allowing LGBTQ+ groups and symbols in 2015, after decades of protests, legal challenges and boycotts by some politicians.
Ahead of Chicago’s parade, thousands of people “many decked out in green with beers in hand” gathered along the Chicago River to watch the local plumbers’ union boats turn the water green.
Organizers say the tradition, started by the union, uses an environmentally friendly powder once used to check pipes for leaks.
In Savannah, Georgia, organizers expected a historic crowd to participate in the parade, which started in 1824.
Ahead of the bicentennial, Georgia’s oldest city had nearly 18,000 hotel rooms booked for the weekend.