"Most people will not realize that the Irish are on 5th Avenue," due to the amount of publicity that the rowdy crowds along the parade route receive, McCormack said.
"The people (who are intoxicated) on the sidelines are not Irish," McCormack asserted, "they may have Irish names...but they know nothing at all about the rich heritage of the Irish."
McCormack pointed out that many St. Patrick's Day parades that still exist today once served as a type of protest march against persecution from native-born "white Anglo-Saxon Protestants."
Associate professor of history and Irish history specialist, Dr. Matthew O'Brien of Franciscan University of Steubenville, said that St. Patrick's Day parades are actually an American invention that the Irish adopted as they "became more aware "about the money that comes in from tourism."
Traditionally, the Irish celebrated their patron's feast day, which is a holy day of obligation in Ireland, with mass and perhaps a special dinner.
"I would say that up until 30 or 40 years ago, it was almost entirely a religious holiday" with "relatively little revelry," Dr. O'Brien told CNA March 8.
The parades, which began as a procession to mass on St. Patrick's Day by Irish soldiers in the British Army some time before the American Revolution, have now become a tourist attraction in Ireland.
Last year, Tourism Ireland reported that the 7.3 million overseas visitors who came to celebrate St. Patrick's Day delivered $4.5 billion in new revenue.
This year, in order to promote Ireland to international visitors, Tourism Ireland lit up iconic landmarks, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Niagara Falls, the London Eye and the Sydney Opera House, with the color green.
"Our aim is to capitalize on Ireland's heightened profile this week and to exploit the unique opportunity that is St. Patrick's Day," chief executive of Tourism Ireland, Niall Gibbons said in a Feb. 16 press release.