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NEW YORK (AP) — People across the United States celebrated Irish heritage Saturday in several major St. Patrick’s Day parades, marking the holiday a day early at events that included a big anniversary in Savannah, Georgia, and honoring a leader pioneering business as grand marshal in New York.
He holiday commemoration He is the patron saint of Ireland and was largely popularized by Irish Catholic immigrants. Although St. Patrick’s Day falls on March 17, some parades were brought forward from Sunday, a day of worship for Christian faithful.
St. Patrick’s Day Parade in ManhattanDating back to 1762, 14 years before the American Declaration of Independence, it is one of the largest Irish heritage holidays in the world.
Megan Stransky of Houston and two family members planned a weekend on Broadway to coincide with the parade, seeing it as a great opportunity to remember her family’s Irish roots and the traditions that helped shape her upbringing.
The event did not disappoint.
“There’s no comparison to any other parade or city I’ve ever been to,” Stransky marveled as he took in the bagpipers, bands, police and military contingents and more.
The grand marshal, Irish-born Heineken USA CEO Maggie Timoney, is the first female CEO of a major American brewing company. At a pre-parade reception at the New York mayor’s residence, Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee praised the recognition of Timoney and highlighted some other causes to celebrate Irish-American ties this year, including the Irish actor. Cillian Murphy’s Best Actor Oscar win last weekend.
New York City has multiple parades on various dates across its five boroughs, including Sunday’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade allowing LGBTQ+ groups to march on Staten Island.
Mayor Eric Adams last month. announced the plan for the new privately organized celebration, organized after a local organization asked for years to join the township’s decades-old parade. That long-running event, which does not allow groups to march under LGBTQ+ banners, occurred earlier this month.
The Manhattan parade began allowing LGBTQ+ groups and symbols in 2015, after decades of protests, legal challenges and boycotts by some politicians.
Before the Chicago parade, thousands of people, many dressed in green and with beers in hand, gathered along the Chicago River to watch the boats of the local plumbers union. turn the water green. Organizers say the tradition, started by the union, uses an eco-friendly powder that was once used to check pipes for leaks.
Katie and Ryan Fox, from suburban Mount Pleasant, got a spot on a tour boat and saw one of the union boats spraying the dye in front of them.
Ryan Fox, 37, said seeing the river stained by a boat was one of the items on his “bucket list.”
“If there’s a city that does it better than Chicago, I’d like to see it,” he said.
Large crowds dressed in green also lined the streets of Savannah for the bicentennial of a parade that started with a few dozen Irish immigrants in 1824. It’s now one of the largest annual events in the South, to the point that the Savannah area had nearly 18,000 hotel rooms booked for the weekend.
Other communities lent their own flavor to the St. Patrick’s Day revelry.
In Oklahoma City, hundreds of people lined the streets of Stockyard City, the largest stockyard operation in the country, for a parade that included longhorn cattle, clowns and a man dressed as St. Patrick. The grand marshal was Anita Swift, granddaughter of American film legend John Wayne.
In San Francisco, revelers dressed in dark green T-shirts and lime green feather boas watched bands, floats and buses in the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. The event called for unity and aimed to bring together different cultural groups with dance, music and food.
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This story has been corrected to show that the Manhattan St. Patrick’s Day Parade began allowing LGBTQ+ groups to march under their own banners in 2015, not 2014, and that the new Staten Island parade that will allow such contingents will be will take place on Sunday, instead of having happened. in February. The story has been edited to clarify that Timoney is the CEO of Heineken in the United States.
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