Each year, as March 17 nears, all of Naperville gears up for the city’s big St. Patrick’s Day celebration: the annual West Suburban Irish St. Patrick’s Day parade!
This past Saturday, the parade’s St. Paddy’s celebrations filled the scene with green! From beautiful bagpipe performances, to longstanding community organizations decked out in Irish attire, the event was a huge hit (bringing out thousands of residents). Not to mention all the runners of the St. Paddy’s Day 5K hitting the streets that morning!
It’s safe to say our hometown knows how to celebrate this famous Irish holiday. 🙂 Check out a few of these parade shots from the Glancer Magazine, and watch this awesome recap of the fun parade festivities from NCTV.
The St. Patrick’s Day celebrations don’t stop there though . . . We still have the actual St. Patrick’s Day holiday this Thursday! Lucky for you, here at Oswald’s we’re still stocked with all things green. Stop in while supplies last!
And, for your reading pleasure, here are 3 interesting facts you may know have known about this lucky day:
- Why do we wear green? The color of St.Patrick is actually blue. Green is the color that represents Ireland and the Irish Isles. Also, for awhile it was very common for people to put a shamrock in their lapel. Eventually, wearing the color “green” became tradition for celebrating this holiday.
- The “green river” is known as a Chicagoland tradition. In 1961, Stephen Bailey received permission to turn the Chicago River green for St. Patrick’s Day. Not knowing how much it would take, he used 100 pounds of dye to color the river. The river stayed green for a whole week! Today we only use 25 pounds of dye.
- St. Patrick wasn’t even Irish! He was actually born in Britain around 385 A.D. and his parents were Roman citizens. It wasn’t until about 16 years later that he went to Ireland.
May the luck o’ the Irish be with you!
Oswald’s Pharmacy
