St Patrick’s Day is on March 17th
and it’s an important date in
Ireland. It’s also important in
other parts of the world where
Irish people have gone to live.
In Ireland
St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday.
People wear green clothes and
shamrocks and there are parades
and parties. The biggest parades are
in Ireland’s capital city, Dublin and at
Downpatrick in Northern Ireland,
because people think St Patrick
died there. There are also lots of
important traditional Irish sports
matches that day.
In the USA
A lot of Irish people went to live in
the USA in the past and St Patrick’s
Day is important there for both Irish
and non-Irish people. In Chicago and
other cities, they put green dye in the
river on St Patrick’s Day. There are
parades, too. The parade in New
York is the biggest in the world.
There are usually about 150,000
people in the parade and two million
people stand in the streets to watch.
Around the world
St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in
some parts of Canada and on the
Caribbean island of Montserrat.
There are parades in Britain, Korea
and Japan and street parties in New
Zealand and Argentina.

Read about St Patrick's Day again. Answer
the questions.
1 St Patrick went to Ireland twice. Why did he go
there the first time? And the second?
2 Why is Downpatrick an important place on
St Patrick’s Day?
3 What is different about Chicago on
St Patrick’s Day?
4 Where is the world’s biggest St Patrick’s Day
parade?

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