Saint Patrick's Day have been cross-community St Patrick's Day parades in towns throughout Northern Ireland, which have attracted thousands of spectators. In the mid-1990s the government of the Republic of Ireland began a campaign to use St Patrick's Day to showcase Ireland and its culture. The government set up a group called St Patrick's Festival, with the aims: The first St Patrick's Festival was held on 17 March 1996. In 1997, it became a three-day event, and by 2000 it was a four-day event. By 2006, the festival was five days long; more than 675,000 people attended the 2009 parade. Overall 2009's five-day
Saint Patrick's Day in the United States before going back down over Jefferson Avenue to get to Washington Avenue. Since 1962 the St. Patrick’s Parade Day Association of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, has conducted this nationally acclaimed parade the weekend before the feast of St. Patrick. Seattle Washington's Saint Patrick's Day Parade, recognized by CNN in 2009 as one of the "Five places to get your green on" in America, travels along a 1-mile route through the Emerald City's downtown financial and retail core the Saturday before Saint Patrick's Day. Seattle's Saint Patrick's Day Celebration is the largest and oldest in the Northwestern United States. In 2009, some