It was not until the early 17th century, almost 1,200 years after his death, that March 17th became the official feast day of St Patrick, the Romano-British missionary who was instrumental in bringing Christianity to Ireland. In the decades and centuries that followed, the day would go on to become not just a celebration of that Christian faith, but of the nascent sense of Ireland as a country with its own distinct identity and culture.
It is telling that the first St Patrick’s Day parades took place not in Ireland but in North America, where Irish soldiers in the British army marched in New York as early as 1762, and Irish immigrants in Boston had gathered to mark the feast day a generation before that. The day remains in many ways a celebration and affirmation of the Irish diaspora: its resilience, its pride, and its stubborn insistence on remembering where it came from.
It was only in 1931 that the first national parade was held in Dublin, and it is only only since the 1990s that the broader St Patrick’s Festival became a fixture of the annual calendar. Alongside that came the now-traditional dispersal of government ministers, despatched across the globe to promote Ireland as a trading partner and diplomatic friend.
All of these elements, the Christian heritage, the formation of a national consciousness, the diasporic connection and, indeed, the keen eye for an economic opportunity, form part of today’s celebrations. None of them is entirely fixed, though. The understanding of Irish national identity, as expressed through culture, language and art, is unstable in the best sense of the word: fluid, ever-shifting and always subject to new voices and new perspectives. Vigorous political debates over sovereignty, unity and neutrality go to the heart of what it means to be Irish in the 21st century.
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The expansion of the St Patrick’s Festival may have been driven by tourism marketing than anything else, but it has transformed what was once a rather drab public holiday into a more vibrant celebration. Ireland’s diaspora continues to play a central role, both through parades across the world and in an influx of visitors celebrating their Irish ancestry. The day has also been embraced by many people who have come from other countries to make their lives here, a welcome reversal of the outward emigration which sapped the country for so long.
There has been an unwelcome trend in recent months of a small minority using the symbols of Irish national identity as markers of exclusion and prejudice. Today’s celebrations are a welcome rebuttal of that narrow vision and an affirmation of the many rich cultural contradictions and complexities of our shared national experience.
