Saint Patrick’s Day is many things to many people. To me, it’s a celebration of Irish culture involving parades, festivals, and every possible reason under the sun for wearing, eating or drinking things green.
To others, as the name implies, this is a Roman Catholic holiday and it was first celebrated in Ireland in the 1600s honoring the patron saint of Ireland.
For a blip in time during the later 1700s, the color associated with Ireland and the holiday was blue. But (according to Wikipedia) as the British wore red, the Irish chose to wear green, and they sang the song ‘The Wearing of the Green’ during the rebellion, cementing the color’s relevance in Irish history.” The change from blue back to green also better reflected the country’s nickname of being the Emerald Isle, as well as the clover that St. Patrick used in his teachings about Catholicism.
Andrew Leung via mic.com adds: “However, not everyone in Ireland is Roman Catholic, and the Irish flag highlights the differences. While Catholics were associated with the color green, Protestants were associated with the color orange due to William of Orange – the Protestant king of England, Scotland and Ireland who in 1690 defeated the deposed Roman Catholic King James II. Therefore, on St. Patrick’s Day, Protestants protest by wearing orange instead of green.
Ironically, no one wears white; the placement of the white stripe between the green and orange stripes on the Irish flag is supposed to symbolize the peace between the Roman Catholic majority and the Protestant minority.”
Shop our gallery today for hundreds of original ways for your walls to wear the green!
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