St. Patrick's Day Is Everyone's Holiday

This Saturday is a significant holiday for New York City and the nation. On St. Patrick's Day everyone is Irish, at least for a few hours. And at least for a few hours, celebrants are united in honoring a spirit of unity that prevails all too infrequently the rest of the year.

The first parade in honor of St. Patrick was held in 1766, organized by Irish soldiers serving King George III. Early St Patrick's Day marchers formed up at their parish churches or their organizations' headquarters and marched to the Old St Patrick's Cathedral at what are now Mott and Prince Streets. The Archbishop greeted the groups, dignitaries and politicians addressed the crowd and the marchers dispersed in search of a bit of St. Pat's Day pleasure, usually in the form of liquid refreshment.

The present-day St. Patrick's Day Parade, sponsored by the Ancient Order of Hibernians,will see more than 150,000 marchers, members of various Irish societies from New York and around the country, and many Eire-based societies who have made the Atlantic crossing, trekking the two miles uptown. Large contingents include the Emerald Societies of the New York City Police and Fire Departments and a number of politicians. The parade is one of only a few such events with no cars, floats, buses, trucks or other vehicles allowed. Only people, led by members of the 165th Infantry (originally the Irish 69th Regiment of Fighting Irish fame), step off at 42nd Street and march north up Fifth Avenue to 86th Street. St. Patrick's Cathedral moved uptown along with the rest of the city, and as has been the case since the 1850s, the Archbishop of New York, today Edward, Cardinal Egan, will review the parade in front of St Patrick's Cathedral at Fifth Avenue and 50th Street.

The New York City St. Patrick's Day parade in 1766 may well have been the first of its kind in the 13 original colonies. Certainly that first parade gave rise to a long, strong and still flourishing tradition that the city and the nation would be the poorer without, and not just because the marchers and the celebrants who line the sidewalks bring in a fair amount of holiday trade. Despite the regrettable record of intolerance toward Irish immigrants that marked a good part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the New York City St. Patrick's Day parade made everybody in town at least a little bit Irish for at least a few hours every March 17. Starting with those few hours at those early parades, inclusion and acceptance spread and grew. Not quite 200 years after the first St. Patrick's Day parade, the country had progressed from employment advertisements that included the sentence "No Irish need apply" to the election of an American of Irish ancestry as 35th president of the United States.

We think we're correct in surmising that the tradition of celebrating St. Patrick's Day led to the tolerance, inclusion and acceptance of other immigrant groups. New York City hosts what may well be the largest number of parades and celebrations of different ethnicities in the United States, if not the world. Were it not for the tradition begun by the first St. Patrick's Day parade, we believe we're safe in surmising that few of the others would take place today.

On this coming Saturday, March 17, 2007, we'll all be sons and daughters of Erin for at least a few hours. Even if you're not on Fifth Avenue, take a moment or two to reflect on and appreciate the first St. Patrick's Day revelers who bequeathed to all of us the right to honor and celebrate who we are and where we come from and to take unto ourselves our own or any other national identity we please whenever that particular parade passes by.