BELFAST — Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! This morning started bright and early as we prepared for our adventure to Slemish Mountain, once St. Patrick’s home and now a popular pilgrimage hike on his namesake holiday. As we left the city, Belfast’s pink double-decker buses and brick buildings gave way to green fields, grazing lambs and crumbling farmhouses. We first saw Slemish from our bus — the mountain rose out of the landscape, its curved face and steep cliffs equally exciting and daunting.
At the base, signs welcomed us with “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day,” while locals milled about, preparing for Slemish’s slopes. But before the climb, we had to meet our mascots. A petting zoo at the bottom of the mountain featured guinea pigs, rabbits, chinchillas and hedgehogs. Students Hayley Duffy and Nichole Whiteley petted guinea pigs, while the more adventurous souls, Abbie Hopson and Dean Melanie Huff, befriended a corn snake. After got our mascots’ blessings, it was time to start our ascent.
The climb was no joke. Stone stairs and a defined track quickly gave way to the muddy footprints of strangers, tufts of shrubbery and loose rocks. Step by step, we edged up the mountain’s harsh face, breathing in the fresh air and taking in the view. The fields below started to look like patches on a quilt of emerald, sage, pine and lime. It’s easy to see why Johnny Cash was inspired to write “Forty Shades of Green” after flying into Ireland and gazing down at the landscape of rolling fields below.
The group pressed on, determined to reach the peak. People below started to look like little ants. Professors Greg Khalil and Liz Donovan clutched their coffee cups. In some places, the track turned into a pit of mud. We passed locals chatting with each other, their Irish lilt carrying on the breeze of the cold mountain air. Two small children with muddy knees and chapped lips stopped with their parents to enjoy a snack on the side of the mountain. Their mother told them, “Now, make sure you eat something healthy before you put the treats in your mouth.” It seems some parts of parenting are universal, from the streets of New York to the mountains of Northern Ireland. We pushed on, leaving behind the family as our legs ached and our lungs burned.
The view from the top was serene. The entire landscape opened up — we could see the misty haze of Scotland over the sea, smoke rising from little fires in the distance, tiny cottages dotting the landscape, winding country lanes, stone walls dividing fields below. Slemish was well worth the hike. There was a cross on top of the summit, a nod to the fact that the mountain is not just a beautiful spot for tourist photos and exercise — Slemish is a site for religious pilgrimages.
After checking out St. Patrick’s Chair, a divot in a boulder on the top of the mountain that is said to be where St. Patrick sat during his time as a shepherd, we braved the downhill climb. We reached the bottom with sore legs and full hearts. Slemish was unforgettable.
At the base of the mountain, we met James Moore, a young man from the Buckna Gospel Hall, a local church in County Antrim. Moore was handing out leaflets with the title “Paul, Patrick and You.” He explained the connection he saw between the Apostle Paul, who spread Christianity as a missionary throughout West Asia and Europe, and St. Patrick, who brought Christianity to the island of Ireland. Moore said three kinds of people hiked up Slemish on Saint Patrick’s day: those wanting the exercise, those there for the entertainment — the coffee cart, the petting zoo, the Irish music — and pilgrims, those there to climb the mountain to follow in the footsteps of St. Patrick. When asked if he was Protestant or Catholic, Moore described himself as a Christian. “I don’t believe there should be a division within Christianity,” he said.
We boarded the bus, ready for the next adventure of the day, as traditional Irish songs played on violins in the background.
Dancing in the Streets: The Spirit of Saint Patrick’s Day
After our hike on Slemish Mountain, and a lunch break, we headed back to Belfast. Even though we were set to arrive at 2:30 p.m. — an hour after the Saint Patrick’s Day parade’s start time — we decided to try our luck at catching the last leg. Many roads were closed and streets were crowded, so we weren’t positive we would get to experience much of the show. Thankfully, we caught the full procession’s finale, where it ended behind the gates of Belfast City Hall.
The Belfast Saint Patrick’s Day parade took a long circle around the city center, beginning at Belfast City Hall and weaving through crowded streets, until it finally arrived back at the starting point an hour and a half later.
The roots of Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations in Belfast, and in the whole of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, are a more recent tradition than most would think. In Ireland, it became a bank holiday in 1903, around 300 years after the first reported celebration of the holiday in the United States. Catholics had observed the saint’s day as part of the liturgical calendar for centuries with a Lent-breaking feast, but not as a public holiday. After the split, Northern Ireland did not hold significant celebrations until the end of the Troubles in 1998, due to sectarian conflict.
The Belfast City Council has presented the Saint Patrick’s Day parade only since 2006, and although the day as a national holiday, sectarianism was evident. Back then, the city handed out multicolored shamrocks, because some unionists deemed green unacceptable.
Now, the celebration of Ireland’s most famous patron saint is widespread in Belfast and attempts to represent the city’s different communities.
In the streets of the city center, people gathered in green, faces painted with Irish flags or shamrocks, waving flags and cheering for the colorful performers as they went by. Everywhere around us, children sat on their parents’ shoulders and climbed onto any surface they could find to fly their flags, and teenagers danced to the music. According to the mayor of Belfast, Lord Mayor Mickey Murray, the parade gets larger every year.
In the procession were dance troupes, school groups, musicians, stilt-walkers, acrobats and mechanical horses, many run by the Beat Carnival company. One stilt-walker took an unfortunate fall in his final stretch, in front of our spot near City Hall, and required three or four people to help him stand up again. The stilt-walkers towered over the crowd with stilts as high as their heads, and he had been walking that way for nearly an hour and a half.
The parade included a variety of acts, from traditional Irish bagpipers to an Indian dance group in cultural dress. The Catholic religious holiday has become a celebration of Irish culture, heritage and local communities.
A City’s Pride: The Titanic’s Belfast Beginnings
After watching the colors and costumes of the parade, we headed to the site where the Titanic was built. We passed two huge yellow cranes that locals have nicknamed Samson and Goliath, the state-of-the-art Titanic Museum and the SS Nomadic, a tender ship that brought passengers, including the “unsinkable” Molly Brown, to the Titanic before arriving at the Harland & Wolff shipyard. Seeing the huge hole in the ground where the boat had been built was surreal — and the sense of the Titanic’s size and the scale of the project was palpable.
Nearly 3,000 workers were involved in building the ship, which took 26 months. Belfast locals worked as welders, riveters and platers, crafting the gargantuan ship that left its waters in 1912. Over 100,000 locals lined the dock to see her off on a voyage that never returned. We dropped by the Titanic Distillers, which specializes in Irish whiskey, located in the site’s historic Pumphouse, before heading to our next stop.
Stormont and the Shifting Tides of Northern Irish Politics
Our last stop of the day’s city tour was the Northern Irish Parliament Buildings, located in the Stormont Estate. Just past the childhood boys’ college of theologian C.S. Lewis, a long path winds through a grass field to the huge and stunning building, completed on Saint Patrick’s Day with flying Union Jack flags.
But the flags don’t always fly, explained our tour guide, Gary Mason. In 2012, the City Council voted to limit the days the flags are raised to the U.K. minimum for government buildings, 18 days per year, which in Northern Ireland occur on holidays. For nationalists, this change was a win, because the flag had previously been raised every day of the year, but loyalists responded with protests and riots, many of which were violent.
The Northern Irish Assembly, created with the Good Friday Agreement, has functioned for only about 40% of the time since 1998, Mason told us. Since its creation, disagreements have led to a back-and-forth of assembly suspension and operation, which was just restored in 2024.
Faith, Conflict and Reconciliation: Beyond Sectarianism: Is Reconciliation Possible?
Our day ended with a wonderful dinner at Millar’s Grill and Seafood, where we were joined by Gary and his wife, Joyce. Over the meal, Gary led a thought-provoking discussion on the relationship between religion, peace, conflict and violence. He outlined key features of sectarianism: the belief in a “one true church,” where people are seen as either in or out; the idea that “error has no right,” where tolerance is sometimes viewed as a weakness; and providence, where people believe God is on their side, justifying their actions as divinely sanctioned.
With these dynamics in mind, we grappled with a critical question: Is reconciliation achievable after sectarianism? How can journalists ensure that words do not normalize violence, but instead contribute to peace? As we reflected on the complexities of sectarianism, history and the power of storytelling, we left dinner with a deeper appreciation of the challenges and possibilities of this ideal.
Edited by Lauren Hartley