US parades cap St Patrick’s Day celebrations – a little early

AP Reporters

People across the United States have celebrated their Irish heritage at several major St Patrick’s Day parades on Saturday.

They are marking the holiday a day early at events that included a big anniversary in Savannah, Georgia, and honoured a pioneering female business leader as grand marshal in New York.

The holiday was largely popularised in the US by Irish immigrants.

Many parades were moved to Saturday, a day ahead of St Patrick’s Day.

Manhattan’s St Patrick’s Day Parade, which dates to 1762 – 14 years before the US Declaration of Independence – is one of the world’s largest Irish heritage festivities.

Megan Stransky of Houston and two relatives planned a Broadway weekend to coincide with the parade, seeing it as a prime opportunity to their family’s Irish roots and the traditions that helped shape their upbringing.

The event did not disappoint. “There is no comparison to any other parade or city that I’ve been to,” Ms Stransky marvelled, as she took in the bagpipers, bands, police and military contingents and more.

The grand marshal, Irish-born Heineken USA chief executive Maggie Timoney, is the first female head of a major US beer company.

At a pre-parade reception at New York’s mayoral residence, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee hailed the recognition for Timoney and noted some other causes for celebrating Irish American links this year, including Cillian Murphy’s best actor Oscar win last weekend.

New York City has multiple parades on various dates around its five boroughs – including, on Sunday, the first St Patrick’s Day parade allowing LGBTQ+ groups to march on Staten Island.

Mayor Eric Adams last month announced the plan for the new, privately organised celebration, arranged after a local group had asked for years to the borough’s decades-old parade. That longstanding event, which does not allow groups to march under LGBTQ+ banners, happened earlier this month.

The Manhattan parade began allowing LGBTQ+ groups and symbols in 2015, after decades of protests, legal challenges and boycotts by some politicians.

Ahead of Chicago’s parade, thousands of people, many decked out in green with beers in hand, gathered along the Chicago River to watch the local plumbers’ union boats turn the water green.

Organisers say the tradition, started by the union, uses an environmentally friendly powder once used to check pipes for leaks.

In Savannah, Georgia, organisers expected a historic crowd to participate in the parade, which started in 1824.

Ahead of the bicentennial, Georgia’s oldest city had nearly 18,000 hotel rooms booked for the weekend.