St. Patrick's Day, 17th March is Ireland's national holiday and is celebrated with events and parades worldwide. Here you can join in the fun and find out all about Saint Patrick, the Irish people and Saint Patricks day

St Patrick in the rare ould times

This change shows in the parade itself (if "parade" is even still the word). Officially, it is probably now the St Patrick's Day Festival Extravaganza, or perhaps the "Mardi Gras of the North".

It has huge floats, street theatre, papier mache heads, amazing costumes, dolphins and devils on sticks, stilt-walkers - and that's only among the spectators. The parade/extravangza/Mardi Gras itself really is something to see; a magical outing for a child and pretty good for a parent - provided of course that the child perched on his shoulders hasn't completely crushed Dad's spine. (When that happens, the child continues to shout happily on high, while Dad looks as though he is sniffing the rear-ends of the people in front.)

The biggest change of all is that nowadays there is sometimes, even … some sunshine!

It's all a far cry from St Patrick's Day in Dublin in the 1970s. Back then it always rained. Either a thin sleety rain, or great big drops, but as a rule it rained on the parade.

There were some floats, of course, but most of them seemed to belong to Abel Alarms. This enterprising company put on a large show of trucks, with small scenes being enacted on the back. Some, but not all, featured ringing burglar alarms.

Each float was adorned and accompanied by a horde of Dublin schoolchildren wearing Abel Alarms sweatshirts. They didn't do a lot, but they looked pretty pleased with themselves. As well they might, the sweatshirt being a new and exotic garment at the time. If it was cherry red and had a big company logo on it, so what, it was still a sweatshirt.

The burglar alarm company (its popularity and obvious profitability must have said something about the state of 1970s Ireland) didn't have the parade entirely to itself. There was an Army band and some FCA-men (women were not admitted to this volunteer army reserve for many years afterwards). The FCA-men used to be well turned out and marched well enough but always looked slightly furtive. Their mates might be watching.

Much of the parade was made up of American-Irish societies. Their members ambled along in white Aran sweaters, wearing sashes that proclaimed them to be something like the Friendly Irish Sons of Soosalonga. They didn't march very well, but they waved good-naturedly and we waved back.

It seemed only fair. They had invented the sweatshirt and sent it amongst us and if they wanted to dress up in the Arans our ancestors wore and go for a long walk in Dublin, fair play to them. The annual soaking might have persuaded them that the Aran sweater is not entirely suitable as an outer garment in Ireland in March, but it never seemed to.

Similar wave-and-wave-back behaviour marked the New York Police Department passing by. They were pretty pleased to be walking around Dublin waving their hands, rather than around the South Bronx or Lower East Side waving their night-sticks. The locals back in New York probably felt the same way.

If memory serves it was a NYPD member, visiting for the parade, who got the full attention of a pub one night by biting through the rim of his pint glass and then chomping it down to the half-way point. Fair dues to him, he got to half-way without paying any attention to the increasing flow of blood from the corners of his mouth. Then again, he might have been a fireman, but he was definitely here for the parade.

A wave of excitement went through Dublin, at least through the male part aged 14 to 18, when it was announced that the Army, FCA, Abel Alarms, Friendly Sons and NYPD were to be joined by some American high school bands.

None of us was wild about Sousa, but high school bands meant high-school high-kickers. Or cheerleaders, or majorettes, whatever they were called they were something new altogether. As novel as sweatshirts, but even more desirable.

Even when the Dublin weather gave their legs more goosepimples than a box of Lego, they looked good. The big fat raindrops may have sent the mascara down their cheeks in streaks, but they smiled and high-stepped on. We (the 14 to 18-year-old males) were in heaven, transported, ecstatic.

A fair proportion of the 185,000-strong Irish illegal immigrant invasion of the US in the 1980s can probably be traced directly back to the impression those majorettes made on those Dublin males who would leave school in the 80s.

The parade is now technically much better. It actually delivers the carnival that we thought we were enjoying then. But despite the new 21st-century fireworks, street-theatre and papier mache heads the 1970s parades mixed rain, dullness and limited glamour to surprisingly good effect.