Wearing green and decorating with shamrocks are
a given on March 17th, but the origins of these traditions goes back hundreds
of years with Saint
Patrick. Saint Patrick is said to have used the shamrock,
a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish.
The earliest
evidence of this anecdote first appears in writing in 1726, though it may be
older. The
color green has been associated with Ireland since at
least the 1640s and green ribbons and shamrocks have
been worn on St. Patrick's Day since at least the 1680s. Throughout
the 19th and 20th centuries, the association of the
color green and with St Patrick's Day grew.
Here's
something really interesting to me... in Buenos Aires, a huge party is held in
the downtown street of Reconquista every St. Patrick’s Day, where the Irish community
is the fifth largest in the world outside Ireland. Irish emigrants arrived
in Argentina mostly between 1830 and 1930.
In fact, the Irish community
in Argentina is the largest in any non-English speaking country in the world!
The Irish-Argentines are still trying to keep the inherited
traditions alive and are working to rescue older traditions that have been lost
over time. It’s believed that there are over a million Irish descendants in
modern-day Argentina. One of their most famous or infamous descendant
of the Irish is Che Guevara!
ciao! fabiana
(info from Wikipedia, images from BHG)
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