Hacker News Reader

Comment by annamargot | Hacker News Reader

Your fun fact is hilarious from an American perspective. It’s the biggest day for bars and pubs in the US and it’s not close.

It’s funny how Irish culture in America seems so different from its motherland counterpart. Same or more so for Italian. No judgements either way. Just interesting how diaspora cultures evolve

View on HN

This “fact” isn’t a fact. Pubs aren’t anywhere near closed in Ireland on St. Patrick’s day.

It’s probably the busiest day of the year for them.

So, this was true until the 30's or so.

So it's possible that this was passed down the generations as fact. It's not true any more though.

Only a guess but this would likely have been because St. Patrick’s Day is a “holy day”. People attend church (lots still do although in the last couple of decades it’s declined massively) and closing pubs would be in line with how some other “holy days” are treated. An example of this is Easter in Northern Ireland. There are still some relatively strict licensing laws over the Easter weekend (although these are about to modernise) with pubs shit for large parts of it.

> Your fun fact is hilarious from an American perspective. It’s the biggest day for bars and pubs in the US and it’s not close.

Must be a regional thing. Its not like that where I live, and a quick search suggests both New Years Eve and Thanksgiving Eve are busier days (which matches my experience).

Well, just because the pubs are closed it doesn't mean they don't drink.

I'm unsure if it's true, but I've been told one reason racing is popular on St Pats is because the tracks serve alcohol.

This whole thing is nonsense - pubs aren’t closed. And most people aren’t anywhere near a race track on St. Patricks’s Day. Unless they’re in Cheltenham, which is in a different country.

The most obvious difference is that it seems to be called St Patty's Day in the US, for some reason. Nobody in Ireland calls it that.

And people call it St Patrick's day in the US as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com