ANYONE who knows Belfast knows how raucous St. Patrick’s Day can be. Cafes shut their doors and police redouble their presence, and the garish green of the festival crowd seems to swim beneath the sky like an outflow of the Lagan.
Mid-March is when the Irish id is unleashed. When pubs experience an upsurge in trade and the mournful drone of ‘The Minstrel Boy’ can be heard echoing around the world.
Queues outside The Five Points and Grace O'Malley pubs on Belfast's Dublin RoadIn the midst of such chaos, it is fitting that the centrepiece should manifest in a parade. St. Patrick’s Day is about more than just the nominal celebration of a saint, after all; it is a time when Irishness itself is put on display and we get to witness, first-hand, changes within the culture.
There was a time when any overt exhibition of the Irish tricolour or ‘wearing the green’ in Belfast would have been considered dangerous. The Church kept a tight stranglehold on how Catholics were meant to celebrate and up until 1961, the sale of alcohol in the Irish Republic was strictly prohibited.
Now the thoroughfares and busy footpaths of Belfast city centre are chockfull of old and young wearing shamrocks in their lapels, sequinned leprechaun hats, GAA jerseys and vintage Celtic tops.
Irish dancers, pipers, drummers and school children share an officially sanctioned parade route with a less conventional – though no less thrilling – cast of stilt-walkers, acrobats, cheerleaders, Chinese dragons, mechanical horses and Indian Bharatanatyam performers.
A mechanical horse followed by a colourful float at today's parade in BelfastDespite these welcome additions, the atmosphere at the parade appears much the same as always. A woman sitting on the steps of Danske Bank to the east of City Hall passes a punnet of curry chips around her friend group. A couple of teenagers pull furtively from a hidden cache of multi-coloured vapes and a smattering of American tourists seem to have lost their way back to their hotel.
Seán from west Belfast tells me that this is the fourth year in a row he has brought his two boys, Fiachra and Ciaran, to the parade. They’re keen to let me know that they’ve procured the best standing spots in the house.
“It’s a much nicer atmosphere than when I was wee,” Seán says. “Most of the heavy drinking and trouble you’d hear about stays around the Holylands and even then, the universities look like they’ve got it under control in recent years.”
A lone stilt-walker in line for the actionThe trouble Seán is referring to is the near-annual ritual in Belfast’s student area – colloquially known as the Holylands – where young people have been known to drink too much, vandalise neighbours’ property and ultimately end up being arrested. In 2008, this manifested in a small-scale riot and police-enforced curfew. In 2016, eleven arrests were made and one member of the PSNI was injured after a bottle was thrown from the nearly 300-strong crowd out on the streets.
But these are seemingly (hopefully) relics of a distant past. If today’s Belfast has shown me anything, it’s that people here know how to have a good time without slipping into the stereotypical mode of the all-drinking, all-fighting Paddy Irishman. And that, in itself, should be cause for celebration.
Mascots from the Belfast Giants hockey team wait their turn to walk in the paradeSee More: Belfast, Belfast City Hall, Holylands, St Patrick's Day
