Editorial
St. Pat's Day Is For All Faiths--Or None

This year, thanks to the vagaries of the Gregorian calendar, St. Patrick's Day falls on the Monday after Palm Sunday- the start of Holy Week for the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches that broke off from it after Martin Luther published his 95 Theses and the Protestant Reformation began in 1517.

That St. Patrick's Day starts the week leading up to the holiest day in the Christian year will be no hindrance to the celebrants who will line Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to watch one of the largest such parades in the world. Those spectators will profess every faith; some, if asked, would declare that they follow no organized religion, and still others would profess no faith or belief at all. It matters not. On St. Patrick's Day in New York City anyone can join in the festivities, whatever their personal beliefs.

St. Patrick's Day is significant for many reasons, one of them being the allinclusiveness of the nature of the celebration. Like the Flushing Remonstrance that preceded it by some 110 years, the first St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City, and all those that followed, allowed for tolerance of differing beliefs. The 30 English colonists who lived in the town of Flushing in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam on signing the Remonstrance which they submitted to the colony's governor, Peter Stuyvesant, called for acceptance of all "sons of Adam", including Catholics, Lutherans and Quakers- even "Jews, Turks and Egyptians", radical as such a notion might have been for its time. It is entirely within reason to assume that some of the revelers who crowded the streets of Lower Manhattan to celebrate the first St. Patrick's Day in New York City in 1766 were of the Lutheran and Quaker persuasions. There might even have been a few "Jews, Turks and Egyptians" among the crowd; at least, we would like to think so.

In the course of the 242 years that St. Patrick's Day has been celebrated in New York City we would like to think that whatever else may happen on the 364 other days of the year, on March 17 all beliefs- or unbeliefs- are created equal. Anyone and everyone, whatever their beliefs, whether they espouse any belief at all, is welcome to celebrate- to watch the parade participants march up Fifth Avenue and cheer them on, to join friends old and new for a libation, or not, if one's faith dictates. On St. Patrick's Day, every New Yorker is a little bit Irish, and all can join in the festive moments, or not, as they choose.