I checked the Galway Advertiser; of course there are festivities in the city of Galway. But there are smaller celebrations in nearby towns…
The only St. Patrick’s Day tradition I remember in my family was my dad would wear a red shirt and a “Thank God I’m Polish” button to work (at a company owned and run by a very Irish-American family.) I would go out of my way to avoid wearing green, just to be contrary. 
However, I am making corned beef and cabbage and it’s absolutely coincidental that we’re having it tomorrow. The stores around here had corned beef on sale, and I’d intended to make it for supper yesterday, but my husband is still out of town (poor baby) and won’t get home till late today. Our daughter will come over tomorrow for dinner and we’ll do it up right - with cabbage, carrots, onions, and potatoes.
Craigslist ran an ad for someone who wanted to hire an Irish tutor. I thought it was a waste of money because all you need to do is finish each sentence with, “Ya bastid!” Or, if you were feeling a little posh, “Ya fookin’ bastid!”
Coddle. Personally I wouldn’t touch it with a shitty shilleleagh.
??? That seems more north of England than Irish.
This is freakishly accurate, particularly the bit about car tax.
Pretty big deal.
Lots of events going on and the centre of Dublin looks like Sodom and Gomorrah by the end of the night.
Shouldn’t that be Sodom and Glockamara?
Sodom and begorrah surely.
Now that right there is funny, I tell you what.
Our family, being German to the core, never celebrated any silly Irish holiday. None of my kids now will eat corned beef or cabbage, so I’ll be making something blah and American, like chicken nuggets. Lamb here is way too expensive.
I can see Germans not eating corned beef. But, cabbage?
Apparently many Irish immigrants carried corned beef with them on their journey to America. Like Swedes carrying Lutefisk, it was a preservation method that didn’t require refrigeration. I’ve heard that the dish is now common in Irish restaurants due to the number of tourists who arrive asking for it.
And it doesn’t matter who you are, where you came from, what you wear, or what you eat. Everybody is Irish on St. Patty’s day!
We love corned beef sandwiches, so have taken advantage of the sales, and been eating it off and on all week. We’re seething with nitrates.
No cabbage is cooked in our house, ever, but tomorrow there will be corned beef, potatoes, carrots, and parsnips.
Semi-pointless side note: my grandfather was from Ireland, and my father swore that he was in his teens before he realized that “British bastard” was two words.
(Note that since my father — on whom be peace — was both of Irish descent and from Montana, what he said did not necessarily bear a 1-to-1 relationship with reality.)
We’re having pulled pork BBQ and pistachio ice cream, then heading over to O’Riley’s to watch midget wrestling. Last year they had mud wrestling. Guess the girls couldn’t make it back.
Gonna skip the pub crawl.
Yes.
…
Lemme 'splain. We go back to the Famine of 1845-1852 (really bad from 1847-1850). During the famine, 1/8 of the population died and 1/8 immigrated. So a population of 8 million in 1845 becomes 6 million in in 1852, and the ongoing effects of the Famine reduce the population to 4 million by the turn of the century (1900).
More than half of the immigrants from Ireland go to the US, where they’re poor, marginalized, and disfranchised. Unable to buy their way out of service in the Civil War, many find themselves drafted. Therein they gain both military experience and political acumen.
Following the US Civil War, some few expats make their way back to Ireland, bringing military expertise with them. Most of the emigrants remain in the US establishing careers, making money, and succeeding in their new lives.
And establishing the Fenians. The network of Irish ex-pats in the East actively raised money to send back to Eire. From the Fenian order in the US arose the IRB in Ireland. St Paddy’s days parades were a vehicle to raise funds for the Fenians.
And from the IRB came the IRA.
I have no idea the age of our contributors from Ireland are, and they’re welcome to contradict me. When I was there studying in '97-'98, I was told (by my Irish friends) that St. Patrick’s Day parades were a very new phenomenon, and borrowed from the US after the rise of the Celtic Tiger.
In short, Irish ex-pats took one of the three patron saints’ feast days and made it into a fund-raising event for Irish nationalism. Mostly an American phenomenon, it was recaptured and recapitulated in Ireland following economic success in the early '90s.
But I may be full of shit.
I was tempted to make corned beef and cabbage, but opted instead for an Irish stew (with lamb and Guinness). I was slightly irritated as I went to the Halal butcher (who advertises “fresh lamb daily”) a couple miles up the street in the morning, and he was out of lamb. He told me they’d have some later that day. I come back at 4 p.m., and he’s still waiting for his supplier, so I had to go to Costco to buy a boneless lamb leg at $5.99/lb. Usually, the Halal guys will have lamb shoulder (which I prefer for stew) at something like $3/lb.
Anyhow, that’s all cooked and set for tomorrow (ETA: I mean, today), and I’ll make some colcannon to go along with it.
Perhaps the latter. Here’s links to videos of Paddy’s Day parades going back to 1965: RTÉ Archives | Daily stories from television and radio records of Irish life
As I said above, I don’t think the parades in Dublin were up to much until recent years, but that’s quite another thing from saying the day wasn’t marked. When my late father was young (he would be 70 this year) it was marked so it’s not a new phenomenon. Your Irish friends were either lying to you or were ignorant of the long history of the day’s festivities on this island.