Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day

The St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the United States may bring beer, parades and green attire to mind. However, studying abroad in the spring gave me the opportunity to see how St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland contrasts with the American celebrations.






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Being in Dublin, however, I was as close to America’s cliché idea of the holiday as I could’ve been in Ireland. Dublin has a lot of tourists come and go, especially on St. Patrick’s Day, and now the capital seems to accommodate for their visitors.

Dublin holds a weeklong festival that concludes on St. Patrick’s Day. The festival includes music performances, art spectacles, Irish language celebrations and a fun fair.

I attended the fun fair in the city center and saw an incredible view of Dublin from the 150-foot high Jubilee Wheel, which was a large, illuminated ferris wheel. I had been living in the city for nearly two months already, but had never seen it like that.

That kind of celebration was not always the case in Dublin, though, and certainly isn’t the case in other parts of Ireland. Many of the locals, including my roommate, filled me in on what the customary celebration is like.

Traditionally, St. Patrick’s Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, was a Catholic day of feast and holy obligations. While people in Ireland still have the day off from work and school on the holiday, it’s not to get drunk like it is in America. People are to go to mass and enjoy a big meal with their families.

More about celebrating St. Patrick Day