Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Kansas City boasts one of the nation's largest St. Patrick's Day Parades. We enjoy a good parade, so we made plans to be there to celebrate our first St. Patrick's Day in Kansas City. In Utah, the big parades are on July 4th and 24th, and to get a good spot, you usually need to camp out. We didn't camp out this past Friday night for this parade, but we did set our alarm Saturday morning and arrived two hours prior to the start of the parade. We got a great spot because apparently, we arrived an hour and a half too early.
We took a pair of folding chairs that we keep in the truck. We set them up on the front row and waited two hours in the cold for the parade to start. Just before it started a man came and stood between us and the family next to us, blocking our view of what would be the oncoming parade. The crowd was an assorted mix of ethnicities and age groups with one thing in common: green. Other than green pancakes or waffles on the morning of March 17th, I hadn't really done anything to celebrate St. Patrick's Day since elementary school. As the crowd began to grow, I remembered that in the United States, St. Patrick's Day is a drinking holiday. The beer drinking theme ran throughout the parade. So too did the theme of snakes. I had never associated snakes with St. Patrick's day, but there were snakes everywhere. I did a little research, and apparently, St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is said to have chased the snakes from the island.
The float with the pagan rituals and the live boa constrictor was probably the strangest, but the entire parade was easily the weirdest parade we have ever seen. It was even more bizarre than the Fourth of July parade in Park City last year where 90% of the entries had something to do with dogs. Kansas City's St. Patrick's Day parade had six marching bands, which usually consisted of a small drum line and dozens of flag girls.
Another popular entry in the parade were the various families or clans. There were the Sweeneys, the O'Learys, the Malonelys, McDonalds, O'Haras, and many others. So, basically, if you are Irish, you can march in the St. Patrick's day parade. It ended without much of a bang. Probably the best thing about the parade were the times they had to tip the few large balloons on their backs to get them under the power lines at the intersection.
Kansas City can keep its odd St. Patrick's day parade. I'll just continue to celebrate in more traditional ways, like putting green food coloring in the milk.
We took a pair of folding chairs that we keep in the truck. We set them up on the front row and waited two hours in the cold for the parade to start. Just before it started a man came and stood between us and the family next to us, blocking our view of what would be the oncoming parade. The crowd was an assorted mix of ethnicities and age groups with one thing in common: green. Other than green pancakes or waffles on the morning of March 17th, I hadn't really done anything to celebrate St. Patrick's Day since elementary school. As the crowd began to grow, I remembered that in the United States, St. Patrick's Day is a drinking holiday. The beer drinking theme ran throughout the parade. So too did the theme of snakes. I had never associated snakes with St. Patrick's day, but there were snakes everywhere. I did a little research, and apparently, St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is said to have chased the snakes from the island.
The float with the pagan rituals and the live boa constrictor was probably the strangest, but the entire parade was easily the weirdest parade we have ever seen. It was even more bizarre than the Fourth of July parade in Park City last year where 90% of the entries had something to do with dogs. Kansas City's St. Patrick's Day parade had six marching bands, which usually consisted of a small drum line and dozens of flag girls.
Another popular entry in the parade were the various families or clans. There were the Sweeneys, the O'Learys, the Malonelys, McDonalds, O'Haras, and many others. So, basically, if you are Irish, you can march in the St. Patrick's day parade. It ended without much of a bang. Probably the best thing about the parade were the times they had to tip the few large balloons on their backs to get them under the power lines at the intersection.
Kansas City can keep its odd St. Patrick's day parade. I'll just continue to celebrate in more traditional ways, like putting green food coloring in the milk.
Make pistachio pudding too. We do that because is is magical how the white powder turns green.
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