The Starlighters Dance Club 3/16/2013 Saint Patty's Day

Did You Know? - Originally, the color associated with Saint Patrick was blue. Over the years the col our green and its association with Saint Patrick's Day grew.

Green ribbons and shamrocks were worn in celebration of St. Patrick's Day as early as the 17th century.

Saint Patrick is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish, and the ubiquitous wearing and display of shamrocks and shamrock-inspired designs has become a feature of the day

In the 1798 rebellion, to make a political statement, Irish soldiers wore full green uniforms on 17 March in hopes of catching public attention.

The phrase "the wearing of the green", meaning to wear a shamrock on one's clothing, derives from a song of the same name.

Did You Know? - Why do you get pinched???

#1 - Forgot to wear green on St. Patty’s Day? Don’t be surprised if you get pinched. No surprise, it’s an entirely American tradition that probably started in the early 1700s. St. Patrick’s revelers thought wearing green made one invisible to leprechauns, fairy creatures who would pinch anyone they could see (anyone not wearing green). People began pinching those who didn’t wear green as a reminder that leprechauns would sneak up and pinch green-abstainers.

#2 - Ireland is known as the Emerald Isle. Green is traditionally worn on St. Patrick's day to honor the Emerald Isle. Tradition holds that on that day, people who do not wear green are pinched as a reminder to wear green to honor the Emerald Isle.

Did You Know? - The style can be traced back to the 14th century in Northern England and parts of Southern Italy, when it was more likely to be called a "bonnet", which term was replaced by "cap" before about 1700, ] except in Scotland, where it continues to be referred to as a "bunnet". When Irish and English immigrants came to the United States, they brought the flat cap with them.

A 1571 Act of Parliament to stimulate domestic wool consumption and general trade decreed that on Sundays and holidays, all males over 6 years of age, except for the nobility and persons of degree, were to wear caps of wool manufacture on force of a fine (3/4d (pence) per day). The Bill was not repealed until 1597, though by this time, the flat cap had become firmly entrenched in English psyche as a recognized mark of a non-noble subject; be it a burgher, a tradesman, or apprentice. The style survives as the Tudor bonnet in some styles of academic dress.

Flat caps were almost universally worn in the 19th century by working class men throughout Britain and Ireland, and versions in finer cloth were also considered to be suitable casual countryside wear for upper-class English men (hence the contemporary alternative name golf cap). Flat caps were worn by fashionable young men in the 1920s.

The stereotype of the flat cap as purely "working class" was never correct. They were frequently worn in the country, but not in town, by middle- and upper-class males for their practicality. Mather says: "A cloth cap is assumed in folk mythology to represent working class, but it also denotes upper class affecting casualness.