Thursday, March 17, 2011

New York Webcam Live at St Patrick's Day Parade 2011

The St Patrick's Day parade in New York City starts at 11.00am on 17th March, first marches up Fifth Avenue past St. Patrick's Cathedral at 50th Street and then up past the American Irish HIstorical Society at 83rd and the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 83rd Street to 86th Street, where the parade usually finishes mid afternoon.

This live feed is in New York for the St Patrick's Day parade:

St Patrick's Day New York Live

Event Information:

In the USA, the Irish Society of Boston organised what was not only the first Saint Patrick's Day Parade in the colonies but the first recorded Saint Patrick's Day Parade in the world on 18 March 1737. (The first parade in Ireland did not occur until 1931 in Dublin.) This parade in Boston involved Irish immigrant workers marching to make a political statement about how they were not happy with their low social status and their inability to obtain jobs in America. New York's first Saint Patrick's Day Parade was held on 17 March 1762 by Irish soldiers in the British Army. The first celebration of Saint Patrick's Day in New York City was held at the Crown and Thistle Tavern in 1766, the parades were held as political and social statements because the Irish immigrants were being treated unfairly. In 1780, General George Washington, who commanded soldiers of Irish descent in the Continental Army, allowed his troops a holiday on 17 March “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence." This event became known as The St. Patrick's Day Encampment of 1780.

Irish patriotism in New York City continued to soar and the parade in New York City continued to grow. Irish aid societies were created like Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Hibernian Society and they marched in the parades too. Finally when many of these aid societies joined forces in 1848 the parade became not only the largest parade in the United States but one of the largest in the world.

Dublin Webcam Live at 2011 St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival

The centre of Dublin in the Republic or Ireland is the focus for the St Patrick's day celebrations on March 17 every year, with a parade, carnival and festival as the city's residents all come out to celebrate the feast day of their patron saint.

This live feed is in Dublin for the St Patrick's Day celebrations:

Dublin St Patrick's Day Parade Live

Event Information:

Saint Patrick's Day is the feast day of Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland and a day of celebration for Irish people and all things that are Irish. It is celebrated on March 17 all over Ireland and everywhere in the world where Irish people or their descendants live. New York City has one of the biggest parades. It is a very Irish festival and it involves a lot of feasting and celebrations, which includes traditional Irish music, drinking Guinness and eating bacon and cabbage. Another tradition is one has to wear green clothing or they will be pinched. Green is the color for Saint Patrick's day as it is the national color of Ireland and people will wear green on that day or have some type of shamrock on their clothing.

Saint Patrick's feast day, as a kind of national day, was already being celebrated by the Irish in Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. In later times he become more and more widely known as the patron of Ireland.[ Saint Patrick's feast day was finally placed on the universal liturgical calendar in the Catholic Church due to the influence of Waterford-born Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding in the early 1600s. Saint Patrick's Day thus became a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. The church calendar avoids the observance of saints' feasts during certain solemnities, moving the saint's day to a time outside those periods. Saint Patrick's Day is occasionally affected by this requirement, when 17 March falls during Holy Week. This happened in 1940, when Saint Patrick's Day was observed on 3 April in order to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and again in 2008, where it was officially observed on 14 March (15 March being used for St. Joseph, which had to be moved from March 19), although the secular celebration still took place on 17 March. Saint Patrick's Day will not fall within Holy Week again until 2160. (In other countries, St. Patrick's feast day is also March 17, but liturgical celebration is omitted when impeded by Sunday or by Holy Week.)