Saint Patrick’s Day is an internationally recognized annual religious and cultural holiday. It’s not a public holiday like Christmas and Thanksgiving in the United States—don’t take March 17th off and expect to be paid unless you live in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Newfoundland and Labrador (the easternmost province of Canada) or Montserrat. Saint Patrick’s Day is a tribute to—you guessed it—Saint Patrick (c. AD 387-461), the most famous of Ireland’s patron saints, and an acknowledgment of Christianity’s arrival in Ireland sometime before the fifth century.
March 17th is most memorable to the casual Saint Patrick’s Day participant for the wearing of green. What you might not know is that blue was the color originally associated with Saint Patrick. Over the hundreds of intervening years—since as early as the 17th century perhaps—green toppled blue as the color of Saint Patrick’s Day and of Ireland in general. It is said that Saint Patrick used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, as a metaphor for the Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Drawing a line from this religious symbolism to Shamrock Shakes, green beer and merchandise that implores passersby to “Kiss Me, I’m Irish!” is not an easy task.
To sort it all out, Tribe sat down with Patrick Griffin, president of the Providence Saint Patrick’s Day Parade Committee and owner of Patrick’s Pub, which celebrates its 20h anniversary in March. We’re told Patrick’s pours the best pint of Guinness in the area. “Believe it or not, there’s an art to it,” Griffin said in a wide-ranging conversation about all things Saint Patrick’s Day.
“Personally,” Griffin said, “it’s a day to celebrate my heritage. I moved to this country in 1984 and straightaway there was this connection I had with Irish Americans. It really struck me. I’ve been here for twenty-seven years and I’ve almost lived here as long as I lived in Ireland. Saint Patrick’s Day is just a great day to get out there and celebrate Irish heritage. It’s a celebration of Irish history, Irish people in America and Irish people all over the world.”
When Griffin moved to the States in 1984, Providence didn’t have a Saint Patrick’s Day parade. “I lived in Boston,” he remembered, “and when I came down to Providence and opened this business up in 1992, there was no parade. There had been a parade in the past but it had lapsed.” Griffin didn’t waste any time. In 1993, having spoken to too many customers disappointed that a capital city of a state with such a large Irish community had no parade, Griffin and a small group of friends and colleagues jumped into action. “About a half dozen of us put this thing together. Now admittedly,” Griffin said with a smile, “the first few years we held the parade, I’d say if you blinked, you might have missed it. It was that small.” As time went on, however, Griffin assembled a network of powerful and influential Ocean State allies—he is, after all, a pub owner. As a result, it’s been easier for him to keep the parade alive, where others repeatedly failed throughout Rhode Island’s history. The Providence Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is now the second largest in Rhode Island, if not the largest. “If it’s not the biggest, it’s definitely second to Newport,” Griffin said proudly and added, “and that’s not to demean any one of the other parades because they’re all great.”
This year, the Providence event took place on Saturday March 10, 2012 and featured a military group, not unlike an American National Guard regiment, from Griffin’s hometown, Athlone in the county of Roscommon. “I think it’s only the second time they’ve ever marched on foreign soil in uniform. The commander is a friend of mine from high school and we had about 25 or 30 of them in the parade.”
From the sounds of it, Patrick’s Pub was the place to be on parade day in Providence. “We had traditional Irish music in here all day long and we had step dancers, including my daughter,” Griffin said. The myriad responsibilities and related minutiae associated with organizing an event like this do not seem to have diminished Griffin’s enthusiasm or emotional attachment to the day. Of the music’s effect on him he said, “When I hear the bagpipers play songs like ‘Danny Boy,’ or any of those old songs, when I start marching and hearing all the bands and looking at the crowd, I just say to myself, ‘thank God I’ve done it again and we’ve kept it going another year.’ Now my kids are involved in the parade and they’re going to remember this long after I’m gone. It’s not only about the older people. It’s about the kids.”
Comparing the day to a miniature Mardi Gras, Griffin was careful to point out that, even packed with parade goers, Providence is a safe place for the whole family. “Knock on wood,” he said striking the table with a knuckle, “we’ve never had a problem—never ever had a problem.” Griffin emphasized the diversity of the parade and suggested that Saint Patrick’s Day is for everyone, not just the Irish. “With all the trouble and conflict going on in the world,” Griffin said, “this is one day we’re all together. We are all having fun and you’ll see thousands of people lining Smith Street all the way down to the State House. Whether you’re Irish or not, it’s a fun day.”
Each year the parade’s grand marshal chooses charities for the committee to highlight and support. This year, Judge Francis J. Darigan has chosen Operation Stand Down Rhode Island, a group that fights homelessness among veterans and Whitmarsh House, an organization committed to providing resources and advocacy to youth, adults with developmental disabilities and families to foster their development as productive and contributing members of the community.
“We raffle off a week-long vacation at a cottage in Ireland. All the money that we make that night—and it usually comes to around $4,000—is given to charity.”
To go with your perfectly poured Patrick’s Pub pint, why not try some corned beef—“slow cooked and falling apart in your mouth,” according to Griffin—and cabbage? Just remember, said Griffin, “In Ireland, corned beef is not a common thing at all. We have bacon that is similar to Canadian bacon or ham. I think when the Irish started coming to the U.S., corned beef was the closest thing they could get to it,” and the rest, as they say, is history.
