Happy St.Patrick's Day!

Even though I'm not Irish, I still like St. Patrick's Day. I got introduced to it while I lived in the USA, and I thought it was a fun day to celebrate. It is full of green things to wear, eat and drink, parades, pinching, shamrocks, leprechauns and pots of gold.

This year Scott and I aren't going to do much for St Pat's because we have been busy with the funeral etc. But I thought I would write a post about St. Patrick because I know that Finns aren't too familiar with it. Most of the information here is from Wikipedia, so if you want to read more about St. Patrick or his special day, you know where to find more information.

Saint Patrick's Day is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated on 17 March. It commemorates Saint Patrick, the most commonly recognized of the patron saints of Ireland, and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. It is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church and Lutheran Church. Saint Patrick's Day was made an official feast day in the early seventeenth century, and has gradually become a celebration of Irish culture in general. The day is generally characterised by the attendance of church services, wearing of green attire and the lifting of Lenten restrictions on eating, and drinking alcohol.

Saint Patrick's Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Newfoundland and Labrador and in Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora, especially in places such as Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand, among others. Today, St. Patrick's Day is probably the most widely celebrated saint's day in the world.

Originally, the color associated with Saint Patrick was blue. Over the years the color green and its association with Saint Patrick's day grew. Green ribbons and shamrocks were worn in celebration of St Patrick's Day as early as the 17th century. Saint Patrick is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish, and the wearing and display of shamrocks and shamrock-inspired designs have become a very important feature of the day. Wearing green is so important that bars and restaurants even color their beer green! That's why some people call St. Patrick's Day the Green beer day. Also traditionally, those who are caught not wearing green are pinched affectionately on St. Patrick's Day (*ouch*).

St. Patrick's Day, although not a legal holiday anywhere in the United States, is nonetheless widely recognized and celebrated throughout the country. It is primarily celebrated as a celebration of Irish and Irish American culture; celebrations include prominent displays of the color green, feasting, copious consumption of alcohol, religious observances, and numerous parades.

The Irish comprise one of the largest ethnic groups in the city of Chicago. Although the Irish are present throughout the city, it is widely known that they are most concentrated on the south side of the city. People on the south side that are of Irish heritage are known as the "South Side Irish," and have long had an influential role in the political and economic scene in Chicago.
The city has many different St. Patrick's Day celebrations. Each year, the city hosts a parade downtown, which involves thousands of people lining the banks of the river and watching as a boat releases dye into the river and turns the Chicago river a kelly green color.

We have seen many of the St. Patrick's day parades in Chicago as well as the green river. Also, our actual hometown, SouthBend in Indiana, is a huge St. Patrick's Day fan because it is the hometown of famous American college football team The Fighting Irish at the University of NotreDame. So, I have really been bombarded with St. Patrick's Day happenings while living in the US. Here's few St. Pat's Day pictures from my photo album.

St. Patrick's Day parade in SouthBend 2008. Here's an Irish leprechaun.

Even llamas enjoy St. Pat's!

I love parades! Why doesn't Finland have more parades...

Chicago river turns green once a year.

For Scott's disappointment I won't be cooking anything Irish today. He really hoped that I would have made a typical St. Patrick's Day meal that they serve in the USA but he won't have the luck of the Irish today. He will have to comply with some Finnish food (*sorry*).

Typical St. Patrick's Day food consists Corned beef with cabbage and Irish soda bread. Corned beef is a type of salt-cured beef product present in many beef-eating cultures. The term comes not from the grain corn, but from the treatment of the meat with "corns" of salt. Corned beef is not considered an Irish national dish, and the connection with Saint Patrick's Day specifically originates as part of Irish-American culture. In Ireland, the closest traditional dish is bacon and cabbage (more akin to Canadian style bacon or ham. Corned beef and cabbage became popular in the U.S. after Irish immigrants in the northeast used corned beef instead of pork in the dish. This substitution was likely due to the low cost of corned beef in the U.S. If you are looking for corned beef recipes, I would recommend allrecipes.com. Along the picture on the left, they have many recipes for corned beef.

Soda bread is a quick bread traditionally made in a variety of cuisines in which baking soda is used as a raising agent rather than the more common yeast. The ingredients of traditional soda bread are flour, bread soda, salt, and buttermilk. The buttermilk in the dough contains lactic acid, which reacts with the baking soda to form tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide. Other ingredients can be added such as raisins, egg or various nuts. Bakers recommend the minimum amount of mixing of the ingredients before baking; the dough should not be kneaded. For a good Irish soda bread recipe, I would again recommend allrecipes because they always have the best and easiest instructions. I actually want to try to bake this bread when I get a chance.

There you go, my St. Patrick's Day post. Make sure you wear green today to avoid being pinched. Also, look for rainbows today because an old Irish legend tells that fairies put a gold pot at the end of a rainbow, and the leprechauns are guarding it. Because leprechauns are sneaky little creatures, you will need all the luck you can find to catch the leprechaun and get the gold. Thus the saying "Luck of the Irish". Do you feel lucky today?