Irish culture will soon be celebrated across the globe with parades, pub crawls and seas of green. But newly uncovered documents prove unlike previous belief, St. Patrick's Day celebrations did not start in Boston, rather at least 100 years earlier in St. Augustine, Florida.
The curious discovery comes from a rather unlikely source: gunpowder expenditures lists from St. Augustine for the years 1600-1601.While cannons and other artillery were often fired to help guide ships safely across St. Augustine's protective sandbar, they were also shot off during times of public celebrations and religious festivities.
A single entry from March 1600 states St. Augustine's residents gathered together and processed through the streets in honor of the feast day of San Patricio, or St. Patrick. As they made their way through the town, cannons fired from the wooden fort in celebration of the Irish saint.
"It was certainly a surprise," said historian J. Michael Francis, PhD, University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, who uncovered the document. "It did not register the first time I saw the name "San Patricio," the Spanish name for St. Patrick. After a few seconds it actually hit me that there was a St. Patrick's Day parade/procession in St. Augustine in 1601. Even more surprising was that the document identified St. Patrick as the patron saint of the city's maize fields."
https://phys.org/news/2018-03-truth-st-patrick-day-celebrations.html
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @05:36PM (2 children)
St. Patrick's Day celebrations did not start in Boston, rather at least 100 years earlier in St. Augustine, Florida
I had assumed being an IRISH holiday it had originated in Ireland. Considering Boston has many Irish descendants it would make sense they celebrate it there. In Ireland it is a national holiday...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @06:18PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @10:10PM
yes, it seems to be a holiday used for non-Irish people in the US to act more... well the people I am referring to are all already pretty stupid, boorish, and hung over at work. To them, it should be a day off--and the day after, too, because work gets in the way of a holiday that regular people don't quite get that in to.