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The smallest parade is said to take place in Hot Springs, Arkansas in the United States; this parade is less than a single city block and is nevertheless the highlight of the day. Boulder, Colorado claims to have the shortest parade which is also less than a single city block.
The first civic and public celebration of St. Patrick's Day in the American Colonies took place in Boston in 1737. The first St. Patrick's Day celebrated in New York City was held at the Crown and Thistle Tavern in 1756. Since then the New York celebration has become the largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the world. The parade itself dates back to 1762, and in 2003 more than 150,000 marchers participated, including bands, military and police groups, county associations, emigrant societies, social and cultural clubs. The parade marches up 5th Avenue in Manhattan and it attracts roughly 2 million people.
The New York parade has been dogged with controversy in recent years as its organisers have banned Irish gays and lesbians from marching as a group. Gay rights groups have fought in court to obtain the right to march alongside other organizations, and there have been calls in Ireland (which, since 1992, has some of the most liberal gay laws in the world) for a boycott of the parade. The gay groups and their sympathisers would lie down in the middle of the street at the start of the parade route, and would be arrested when they refused to move; in the late 1980s such arrests averaged several hundred per year, but had dwindled to a dozen or less annually by the early 2000s. A tradition has begun in Queens, New York of organizing a parade the week before the official St. Patrick's Day parade which is open to all organizations wishing to march.
The parade is organized and run by the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) [1]. For many years, the St. Patrick's Day Parade was the primary public function of the AOH. On occasion the AOH has appointed controversial Irish republican figures (some of whom were barred from the U.S.) to be its Grand Marshal.
The New York parade is moved to the previous Saturday (March 16) in years where March 17 is a Sunday. The event is also moved on the rare occasions when, due to Easter falling on a very early date, March 17 would land in Holy Week—this last occurred in 1913, when the parade was held on Saturday, March 15 because Easter that year was March 23 (making March 17 the Monday of Holy Week); this same scenario is scheduled to arise again in 2008, when Easter will also fall on March 23. In many other American cities (such as San Francisco), the parade is always held on the Sunday before March 17, regardless of the permutations of the liturgical calendar.
The Chicago River, dyed green for the 2005 St. Patrick's Day celebration.
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The Chicago River, dyed green for the 2005 St. Patrick's Day celebration.
Some U.S. cities paint the traffic stripe of their parade routes green. Others, including Chicago, dye their principal rivers green, an act that most native Irish find bizarre.
The longest running St. Patrick's Day parades in the U.S. are:
* Boston, Massachusetts, since 1737
* New York, New York, since 1762
* Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1780
* Savannah, Georgia, since 1813
* Carbondale, Pennsylvania, since 1833
* Chicago, Illinois, since 1843
* New Haven, Connecticut, since 1845
* San Francisco, California, since 1852
The longest running St. Patrick's Day parade in Canada takes place in Montreal, which began in 1824. |
