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Saint Patrick's Day

The  Catholic annual feast day of St. Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland.[1]

Traditionally celebrated on March 17 each year by Irish people throughout the world, commemorating the life of Saint Patrick and the advent of Christianity in Ireland.[1]

St. Patrick's Day was first celebrated in America in Boston in 1737. The first St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City was held in 1762. Though not a national holiday in the United States, the tradition spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific and was observed in every state and territory by the 1870s as a result of the waves of Irish immigrants entering the country.[1]

The Long Hunt: On December 5, 1877 in the Palace Saloon in Prescott,[2] Arizona Territory, Rex Clark sat in a poker game with Bret Maverick. Clark complained that Bret had been having "more luck than sixteen Irishmen in a shamrock field on St. Patrick's Day."[3]