Americanized St Patrick's Day

I have never investigated St Patrick before this year and am doing a brief search to further my knowledge.
A brief history lesson:
St. Patrick's Day was originally a Roman Catholic feast day for Ireland’s patron saint, celebrated only in Ireland since before the 1600s. But it evolved into a secular holiday in the 1700s, when Irish immigrants in the US held some of the first St. Patrick’s Day parades.
About St Patrick




This is our family (and a random boy) in front of the Croagh Patrick statue in Ireland from 2009.  Saint Patrick reputedly fasted on the summit of Croagh Patrick for forty days after walking up barefoot in the fifth century and built a church there.

 Patrick was captured around the age of 16 and was taken to Ireland as a slave.  He lived there for 6 years before escaping and returning to his family.   After entering the Church, he returned to Ireland as an ordained bishop in the north and west of the island. By the seventh century, he had come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland. On a widespread interpretation he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the 5th century.  March 17th is the anniversary of St Patrick's death.   In the dioceses of Ireland it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation and outside of Ireland, it can be a celebration of Ireland itself. 

The Food
Ever wonder why we eat corned beef and cabbage on March 17th?  I learned that only half of the meal was authentic to Ireland.  Cabbage is one of the staples of Ireland, but the origins detailed bacon to be the paired meat.  Corned beef was the American alteration because it was less costly.  This dish is now more popular in the United States than it is in Ireland.

Wearing Green
One last interesting March 17th blarney is that if you wear green you will be invisible to the leprechauns, hence you will not be pinched by these fairy creatures.  People started pinching those not wearing green as a reminder that the leprechauns could see them and pinch them too.  This also was an American tradition that started in the 1700's.   
So there you have it.  St Patrick's Day almost sounds more American than it does Irish! 

As an added bonus...
My kids had the day off from school on St Patrick's Day.  Looking back I am thinking, maybe I should have done something more authentically Irish this day but I guess I will look into that for next year since I blew that idea a couple days too late!  Anyway, we did enjoy a fun day off.  I discovered RedBox (you know, one of those movie vending machines) and I rented Despicable Me for them.  They have been waiting quite patiently for our reserved copy from the library but we are about #400 on the list right now...I thought it may be another year before it is our turn!  So, I surprised them with that and to top it off, I made them pizza.  That is quite the rare experience for them for lunch so it was a HUGE treat!  We sat eating carrots, cheese pizza and raisins and drinking Fuze (another treat) on the living room floor during our movie.  It was a fun time.  But, there was nothing Irish about our day at all!

 Being dominantly Irish in decent I am doing a poor job of passing down any traditions of the holiday, but then again, it has been Americanized enough that there is not much authenticity to it anyway!  I guess I am safe and will not have any angry Irish relatives!