Weird St. Patrick's Day Events

St. Patrick's Day has come around again. I like that holiday, and even if I did not have an Irish heritage in my DNA it still would be fun for me. I see the Irish as fun loving people. Does anyone have a prejudice against the Irish? I doubt it.  Who could hate humor, friendliness, and an acceptance of and care-free attitude about daily life. The many Irish jokes, all of which are endearing rather than mean spirited, reflect that.

St. Patrick's Day celebrations sometimes reflect the care-free and fun Irish lifestyle. In my own former home of New Orleans the Irish parades toss vegetables to the spectators. Carrots, potatoes, onions, cabbages are thrown to the crowd so they can use them as ingredients for an Irish stew. If that's not enough, the Irish St. Patrick's Day Parade marchers, dressed in their green outfits and fortified with cups of beer,  give kisses to the crowd (well, the pretty girls get the most kisses) as they gyrate to the Irish music the accompanying bands play during the march. Is that not typically Irish?

But wait! Here are a few other ingenious and fun St. Patty Day traditions from various places on the globe.
- Hot Springs, Arkansas takes pride in hosting the shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade. The route is only about 30 meters long. And among the groups in the parade....Irish Elvis impersonators and a fat middle age group called 'Lards of the Dance'.

- Each year, members of the Shamrock Club in New London, Wisconsin dress up as leprechauns and change highway signs so the town name reads 'New Dublin'. to all those who have ever been in Wisconsin for awhile, changing a city there to an Irish city might seem like a good idea.

- For more than 40 years in Chicago, the Chicago River has been dyed green on St. Patrick's Day (the river is colored by a vegetable dye and it takes several days for the green color to disappear).

- In Banwen, Wales, a history club insists that St. Patrick was in fact Welsh. Yep!  They declare St. Patty to be Welsh, not Irish. (At age 16, historians say that St. Patrick was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Ireland. So on St. Patrick's Day,  Banwen stages a parade that leads to a stone commemorating where the patron saint of Ireland was allegedly born. Up yours Ireland...or something.

-  A Caribbean island, Montserrat, is the only other place outside of Ireland that celebrates St. Patrick’s Day as a national holiday. A small percentage of the Caribbean islands nearly 4,500 people are descended from Irish Catholic settlers, but the Irish immigrants there are regarded as having been indispensable to the island's early development.

Happy St. Patrick's Day and as the Irish say,  may you be in heaven five minutes before the devil knows you died.