The Garden State is going green!
New Jersey saw a meteoric rise in interest for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations over the last three years, according to a new study.
Jersey, which is regularly ranked as one of the most Irish in the US, is slowly but surely inching towards taking its place as the East Coast’s St. Paddy’s Day hotspot, as interest in festivities in states with deeper Irish history like Massachusetts remains relatively stagnant.
Public interest in Massachusetts’ St. Pat’s parties is waning, despite appearing as the reigning champion for all things Irish, according to a new study shared by BETMGM in late February.
The study recorded “meaningful gains in celebration intensity” using Google Trends data relating to St. Patrick’s Day hallmarks — namely, alcohol and green paraphernalia. It weighed those demonstrated “interest levels” with each state’s available “Irish ancestry population data” to estimate how traction may be shifting.
Seventeen states that either didn’t have Irish ancestry data available or failed to “meet reporting thresholds,” including New York, were excluded from the study.
Still, New Jersey towered over the 33 states that were analyzed. The Garden State saw an estimated 10% spike in “celebration intensity,” with snoozer states like Indiana and Iowa also clinching high ranks.
Comparatively, Massachusetts saw a slim 1% boost.
More than 15 parades are held in New Jersey throughout March each year, all to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
South Boston’s 3.5-mile parade almost always sees the largest turnout of any celebration in the country, in part because it’s held on a Sunday — rather than the day of St. Patrick’s Day — and is easily accessible to students attending the dozens of colleges in the area.
Even though New York wasn’t featured on the list, urbanites in the Big Apple don’t mess around with St. Patrick’s Day.
Staten Island’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, held on March 1, was plagued by repeated snafus this year.
First, locals were outraged by the “insensitive” decision to host the parade when it was clear the snow left by back-to-back winter storms wouldn’t melt by the beginning of March.
Then, when the parade did go off on the snow-clogged streets, it was delayed by a lone Target bag left near the starting point, which police probed as a possible improvised explosive device.
The revelers, too, were left high and dry when multiple shops in the borough closed early to avoid the “next-level” insanity that hordes of drunken teenagers wrought at the island’s 2025 St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is set to march up Fifth Avenue on March 17.
St. Patrick’s Day marks the death of Ireland’s patron, who famously drove all snakes off the island nation, according to legend. He was never formally canonized by the Vatican, which was established 15 centuries after his death.
