Talk:Saint Patrick's Day

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Contents 1 River Dyed Green 2 Image:Guinness-original-logo.jpg 3 Guinness 4 Shamrock? 5 Biggest parade: NYC or Chicago? 6 Irish colonists?

[edit] River Dyed Green

As a chemist, I'm dubious that the photo on the front page shows the river dyed green "with fluorescein." Fluorescein solutions are orange, and while the fluoresce green, they don't look like that. I think it's probably a vegetable dye.

Not to mention fluoresceine is carcinogenic, and you would need a dangerously high concentration to make the river as green as that. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.86.138.193 (talk) 13:40, 17 March 2007 (UTC).

Since no proof has been presented of what the dye is/was, I deleted that part of the caption. Johntex\^talk 04:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I live in Chicago and have never seen the river so green. Year-round its a muddled dark green, but for St. Patrick's, there is no difference.

The photo is definitely doctored

There's a video of them coloring the river here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFXlPJ9hKrY - personally I think it's a bit odd that the first photo on a page about St Patrick is in Chicago though and not Ireland. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanpops (talk • contribs) 10:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The dye is orange. It produces green when in the river. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.187.254.237 (talk) 03:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Guinness-original-logo.jpg

I have not removed the above logo from the article, although it has no non-free use rationale and it is hard to see how it could have one? Seth Whales (talk) 12:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Guinness

I don't see why the section on Drink was removed, St Patrick's day celebration are mainly celebrated in pubs, and Irish drinks are drunk. Whether it's tradition or not the Guinness connection with marketing st Patrick's day is undeniable. I did try to write it in a balanced way with regards to the commercialisation of the festival. If Guinness hadn't used it for advertising then no non Irish would celebrate it. At least in the UK.

--Stripy42 (talk) 13:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Outside of the UK Guinness isn't brewed in Ireland, it's all from Sleeman's in Canada, which is actually owned by the Japanese Sapporo. It's about as Irish as the plastic paddies. In otherwords, it has nothing to do with Saint Patrick's Day. Alcohol really has nothing to do with the celebration of a Christian Saint. The whole getting drunk thing is nothing but marketing. tyx (talk) 19:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Shamrock?

The article states that St. Patrick used the Shamrock to explain the Trinity. I have no idea if that is true; however, this article in slate [1] claims the Shamrock/Trinity connection to be an 18th Century invention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.173.238.96 (talk) 19:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
The story of St. Patrick using the shamrock to explain the Trinity has been thought in Irish schools for years, regardless of if its true, it is relevantArcticEmmet (talk) 18:39, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Biggest parade: NYC or Chicago?

In the "Celebration overview" section I removed this unsourced sentence which had a "citation needed" tag:

The largest St. Patrick's Day parade is held in Chicago and it is watched by over 2.5 million spectators.^{[citation needed]}

I added a sentence saying New York City has the largest parade (2 million spectators; 150,000 marchers), sourced it to an AP article of 3/18/08. I looked on Google for a little while and found no source at all giving a larger number than NYC or a statement saying that Chicago's is the largest (aside from mirrors of this article on the Web). Anyone feel free to correct or adjust this, but please source it. Noroton (talk) 21:56, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Irish colonists?

The article says that St. Patrick's Day was brought to the US by Irish colonists... I just wondered if it was inappropriate phrasing, given that Ireland itself was being colonised by Britain at the time. Would 'immigrants' not be a better term, or, if one insists on using the term 'colonists', 'British-colonists-who-fancied-themselves-Irish', perhaps??! I know it's only a nitpick, but I thought it was a strange choice of words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.124.88.196 (talk) 14:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)