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St. Patty's Shindig

© Giao Duong Williams

Having attended a school whose mascot is the Leprechaun and now living in a city where the river is famously dyed green to commemorate, it'd be quite the feat (and a disappointment) to say that the spirit of St. Patrick hasn't been a part of every year. March 17 always signals for me a time to wear green (lest ye be pinched!) and a good excuse to get the friends around for a bit of being green. It doesn't have to always be a rowdy time of drunken carousing ~ though it can easily be that if you wish...Round up fellow leprechauns and pretend to be Irish for the day with a St. Patty's Shindig.

History
The history of St. Patrick, the man and patron saint of Ireland, is a fabled one that has come to be not quite accurate but rather charming nonetheless. I must admit that in all my years of celebrating St. Patty's Day, I always truly believed that he was 1) Irish and 2) the man who drove the snakes from Ireland. My husband has schooled me on St. Patrick's possible Welsh origin, and I have come to learn that the snake tale probably could not have been. You can entice friends' appetites for trivia and set the record straight for fellow green revelers with a mini history lesson via link if you're going to use email or online invitations, or print up mini flash cards of facts, culling your favorite trivia from these online sources and printing them up on your hard copy invites.

The following are a few great sources for St. Patty trivia:

• The History Channel
• St. Patrick
• BBC Facts & Figures
• Butler Webs
• FactMonster
• The Holiday Spot

IN, OUT, ALL AROUND TOWN
Because St. Patrick's Day is such a widely celebrated holiday across the nation (and across the pond!), the options for revelry are vast. Choose what is best suited to you and your intended guests. Just because you spent the last five St. Patrick's Days in a green-beer stupor doesn't mean you have to endure another one in the exact same manner...

Invitations
As mentioned previously, you can whet your friends' appetite for a bit of blarney with the invitations you send out to them. Be as outlandish or sophisticated as you wish. You will set the initial tone of your do with the invites...though this too can evolve as your gathering does.

Online
Invitations online can be easily had from the tech-savvy-partymakers' pal, Evite. There are many design templates to choose from, you can pop in event and trivia details as you like, and you get a handy dandy tracking mechanism for guests' RSVP's.

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