- St. Patrick is considered a patron saint of Ireland and the March 17th celebration is a national holiday in Ireland.
- Originally blue was the colour of St. Patrick but as the celebration took on multinational proportions and its association Irish culture and shamrock symbolism grew it changed to Irish green.
- The three leafed shamrock was also used to explain the holy trinity to pre-christian Irish.
- The emphasis of drinking alcohol on St. Patrick's day can be linked to the pagan-Roman celebration of Bacchanalia on March 15 and 16, whose patron Bacchus was the Roman wine god.
In the 1990's the Irish government began a campaign to use St. Paddy's Day to showcase Ireland and its culture with three goals for the festival:
- Offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebrations in the world and promote excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity, grassroots involvement, and marketing activity.
- Provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent, (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and expressive celebrations.
- Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal, as we approach the new millennium.
This is an excuse for people to sit around and drink all day long like the Irish do.
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