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Posted on March 17, 2008 | Category: Events, History, Holiday
See more photographs from the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Newport RI
Irish Immigration
Saint Patrick’s Day has a long tradition in the United States. The tradition goes back to 1737 when many Irish immigrants who were coming to Boston began celebrating the holiday, and about a generation later, in 1766, the first parade began in New York. It remains the oldest running St. Patrick’s day parade in the US to date.
The Irish originally came to the United States during the 1700s for a variety of reasons largely associated with religious percussion and the high cost of rent. Most Irish tended to be Roman Catholic, but many of the rulers near Ireland including King James I, of England, and other Protestants elites had been trying to solidly control in the 1600’s by giving land to English and Scottish Protestants. This eventually led to the Irish Rebellion of 1641, and left many Irish disenfranchised. Naturally, they began coming here to escape many of those difficulties. After the 1700s the difficulties continued to escalate and led to the Irish Potato famine of 1840’s which killed millions. Eventually the potato famine would lead to even more problems culminating in the Irish war of Independence of 1919 which was followed by a brief civil war over boundary disputes.
St. Patrick
Saint Patrick is legend to have driven all the Snakes from Ireland, however being that Ireland is an island it likely did not have any real snakes like New Zealand and Hawaii, which have no snakes. The snake is highly symbolic of the devil, and since the druids who were in control of Ireland during the time of St. Patrick considered their priest’s sons of serpents and had a very high admiration of serpents it would makes sense that the serpent would be a symbol of this religion.
In fact time and time again in worldwide religion we see the serpent as a god, sometimes good and worshiped other times bad, but always as a god in conflict. So the serpent was originally seen as good by the druids, and St. Patrick saw the serpent through the Christian view, and so it was essentially the embodiment of evil which was driven from Ireland. According to Christian tradition after the fall in Garden of Eden there was enmity put between the serpent and woman, meaning the seed of woman and the seed of serpent. The third force can be seen in the enmity which is the sons of God, who are the good force which is holding back the evil from the seed of woman. Also, the druids worshipped a large variety of other pagan gods.
Patrick was born and raised in Britain which was under Roman rule rule at the time. His family was a rather well-to-do family, and his father Calpornius was a tax collector, which explains why they were so well off. I dont think there is such a thing as a poor tax collector, but if there is Patrick’s father certainly wasn’t one.
Patrick was sized at the age of about 16 in 401 AD, by raiding Irish tribes. When he was a slave working as a herdsman in Ireland he then went a profound transformation and found comfort in God, and by the end of the 6 years he becomes a what has been described by some as a mystic of sorts. Then God talks to him in a dream urging him to return to Britain, and when he arrives in Britain he receives a dream in which he is told to return to Ireland. He then studies for 15 years and entered the priesthood before being commissioned to return to Ireland where he then preaches the gospel.
Back in Ireland he uses some interesting techniques, and really has an advantage because he now understands the people of Ireland. Also he uses the shamrock to describe the seemingly illogical concept of the Holy Trinity. He shows them how as the shamrock is one leaf with three parts, so God is one God in three persons. St. Patrick being sensitive to the culture of Ireland allowed religious synchronism on nonessentials. He allows them to superimpose the symbol of the sun on top of the Christian cross, and to celebrate Easter with their customary bond fires. This eventually became the approach of Christianity at the time after St. Paul’s philosophy of becoming all things to all people if they saw a group of pagans worshiping a tree they would not cut it down, but would dedicate the tree to Christ.
Parades
For this year’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration there were (or are soon to be) many large parades in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and in many other places around the country. Today the parades, which began in the United States, have even spread back to Ireland with parades in Dublin and other larger celebrations in Ireland. Before, the celebrations in Ireland used to be a relatively small. One particular parade in Newport Rhode Island has been running 52 years and while it is certainly not as large as New York and Boston it is a large parade in its own right with:
“10 Pipe Bands, 12 Marching Bands, 4 Fife & Drum Corps, 3 Clown Units, 7 reenactment units, and a host of local, state, and regional organizations including police and fire units, social/fraternal organizations, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Schools, and non-profits.”
The parade lasted over 2 hours and had it undoubtedly seemed like there were enough police, fire, and military units to respond to a disaster of almost unimaginable proportions.
Fortunately there was no disaster for the Capitol police, state police, local police, bomb squad, numerous firefighters along with many ladder and pumper trucks, coast guard, harbor patrol, Marines, Army, Navy, and the many other selfless public servants in the parade to respond to.
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