Wow, here’s a first for TV’s long-running hit cartoon The Simpsons.
The St Patrick’s Day special will air in Ireland before it’s transmitted in the US.This is quite a move. In fact, it’s unprecedented in the 20-year history of Fox, the home (and butt of many jokes) of The Simpson family.
The new episode is called ‘In The Name Of The Grandfather’ and will see Homer attempting to honour Grampa’s dream of a final beer in a pub in the village of Dunkilderry. The pair eventually end up buying the pub off Tom O’Flanagan, whose voice has been provided by Irish actor Colm Meaney.
The special episode will be screened on St Patrick’s Day itself.
The Irish Club of the Netherlands is hosting a party for St. Patrick’s Day on March 14th at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the Hague. Four different bands will be performing and there will be a free kids party, storytelling, and more fun and games. Tickets are €20. Read all about it.
The Ocean County’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade will bring a bit of Irish luck to New Jersey food banks. Organizers are asking participants and attendees to bring one non-perishable food item to the parade to help fill New Jersey food banks, which are practically wiped out during the current economic crisis.
Collection and transportation of all the donated food will be organized by the Teamsters. Everyone is encouraged to bring an item to the parade and the Teamsters, with members of the Monmouth and Ocean County Building Trades and Monmouth-Ocean AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, will run down the parade route just before the parade starts and collect the items. The supply will be divided up and delivered to area food banks.
“The more that is collected, the more it can be spread around,” says Bernard Viggiani, PR director for the parade. “I know of some people putting up boxes at their work places so their company or local businesses can pack a box or two and bring it to the parade with their name on it. We have posters online so you can just print them out and hang them in your office, workplace or even classroom,” he said.
The people in Savannah, Georgia, will not let the economic recession spoil their fun this March 17th. The internationally famous Savannah Saint Patrick’s Day Parade will go on as usual.
Each year thousands of people from all over the world come to the Georgia city to be Irish for a day on Saint Patrick’s Day. This year, the economy is in the dumps and the parade falls in the middle of the week. While some call it a double whammy, those who are planning the festivities remain optimistic that this Saint Patrick’s Day will still bring in the green.
John Forbes, the parade committee’s general chairman, said: “We really didn’t now how the economic problems were going to effect the parade and it did effect us to a degree,” he said. “We were worried, but it’s Saint Patrick’s Day in Savannah and everyone wants to be a part of it.”
Philadelphia will have a Saint Patrick’s Day parade after all due to donations pouring in to keep the parade afloat. Every year organizors raise $70,000 for the parade, but because of Philadelphia’s budget crisis, city officials said about a month ago that organize would have to also pay for police, sanitation and other city services that had been free in the past. An additional unanticipated $40,000 was needed to make sure the parade could take place this year.
Luckily donations have been pouring in since The Inquirer reported Sunday that Philadelphia Media Holdings had pledged up to $20,000 to match contributions dollar for dollar.
“There’s no question we’re going to make it,” said parade director Michael Bradley.
Congratulations to Philadelphia and lots of fun to everyone who is going to the parade there.
For the 158th year the San Francisco St. Patrick’s Day Parade will take place on Saturday March 14th with more than a hundred floats, dancers and marching bands. It is an event not to be missed if you’re in the area. Everyone can be Irish for a day on St Patrick’s Day in San Francisco. It’s the largest Irish event west of the Mississippi. The Parade will begin at 11:30am at the corner of Second and Market, where more than 5,000 participants from all over the country, will reel about with laughter and revelry all the way to City Hall.
The Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade & Festival in San Francisco is presented by the United Irish Societies of San Francisco. Their purpose is to preserve and perpetuate the democratic principles of the Irish people, and of those for the freedom of Ireland and of the United States of America.
For more information about the San Francisco Saint Patrick’s Day Parade see their official website.
Here are some pictures of the San Francisco Saint Patrick’s Day Parade of recent years:
The makers of Guinness® Irish Stout are asking President O’bama to amend the calender of official holidays in the United States to include St. Patrick’s Day. To do so, the iconic brand is re-introducing Proposition 3-17, a movement to make Saint Patrick’s Day a national holiday for Americans.
The makers of Guinness first proposed Proposition 3-17 in 2008 and collected more than 352,000 signatures in support of the official holiday status. This year, the brand aims to bolster the movement as Americans need, more so now than ever, to take a break and celebrate the holiday with friends and family.
The period from President’s Day to Memorial Day (98 days) marks the longest stretch in the working calendar without an official holiday break. By contrast there are five official holidays within the 81-day period from Thanksgiving to President’s Day.
Adults 21 and older can support Proposition 3-17 by signing the petition at bars and retail stores where Guinness is sold, by visiting Proposition317.com (www.Proposition317.com) or texting the word “SIGN” to 65579.
St. Patrick’s Day isn’t just celebrated by those with Irish ancestry. According to a 2008 survey of men and women 21 years of age and older, more than half (57%) of those polled think everyone has “a little bit of Irish in them” on St. Patrick’s Day. In fact, while 54% of respondents surveyed with Irish ancestry planned to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, almost a third of U.S. residents who don’t claim Irish ancestry also planned to celebrate the holiday. This rich celebration has become a part of the American fabric
New York State is postponing their village elections for Saint Patrick’s Day. The election is supposed to be held on the third Tuesday in March, but this year that means it’ll be on March 17th, or St. Patrick’s Day! It’s not just a suggestion, it’s actually the law. The law was changed in 1998, which was the last time the election and St. Patrick’s Day fell on the same Tuesday. Before this law villages had the option to move the election, but since 1998 it is mandatory to move it.
The bill was introduced by then-Assemblyman Joseph Crowley, an Irish-American from Queens who is now a congressman for New York’s 7th District. His co-sponsor was Nicholas Spano, then an assemblyman from the very Irish community of Yonkers in Westchester County.
The fact that two politicians from the New York City area sponsored the bill should come as no surprise: The city was the site of the first St. Patrick’s Day parade held in 1762, and it’s still the largest St. Patrick’s parade in the country.
The official — and brief — reason given for the bill: To honor Irish heritage.
Does that mean donning green wigs and shamrock sunglasses, and drinking in Irish bars?
“To honor Irish heritage,” is as far as Brehm will go.
Through his communications director, Crowley jokingly recalled sponsoring the bill as way of “promoting free and fair elections, so as not to give any Irish candidates a leg up.”
“But obviously it was done to let folks celebrate the holiday,” said Angela Barranco, speaking for Crowley. “And make sure that village elections weren’t overshadowed.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 34 million Americans say their ancestors came from Ireland, about 12 percent of the country’s population. It’s the nation’s second most frequently reported ancestry, behind German.
But that may not really matter.
On St. Patrick’s Day, as the saying goes, everyone is Irish.
2009 marks the 250th anniversary of Guinness beer founder Arthur Guinness signing in the lease on the famous St. James Brewery. 2009 is a big year for Guinness and Tuesday March 17 2009 marks one of their biggest days: St. Patrick’s Day. Celebrate St. Paddy’s with a pint of Guinness and a cool beer-themed t-shirt from saint-patricks-day-t-shirts.com. Here are some of our favorites:
