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There’s a parade this weekend in Philly. There’ll be music, dancing girls, and more green than they see at the Mint in a year. And the best part of all—everybody there is your friend.

Philly’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is a lot like those hometown events where the bands and floats are interspersed with kids riding bikes with streamers on them. Okay, there are no kids on bikes (there will be a women’s rollerblade team and they dress pretty funky), but it has a small town feel even when you see it marching from Broad Street to the Parkway. People are laughing, cheering, singing and dancing and—hold on to your hats—actually chatting with complete strangers. Last year, I talked to two guys who were sharing a beer together outside Tir na Nog. When I asked them how long they’d known each other, they looked at one another. “Oh,” said one, “I think about 20 minutes.” It kinda goes like that.

The shenanigans start on Friday night, March 7:

• Celtic beer tasting at the Washington House restaurant in Sellersville
• The Hothouse Flowers at World Café Live
• Phil Coulter and the Irish Pops Orchestra at the Keswick in Glenside
• The Chieftains at Princeton’s McCarter Theater
• Derek Warfield and the Young Wolfetones at the Irish Center
• Irish Beef and Beer Night with Celtic Spirit at The Arts Scene in West Chester

Then, on Saturday:

The Erin Express leaves the station. Eight busses will be available to take revelers from one Irish pub to another. No driving, no cost, no need for the family to see a bail bondsman to spring you from jail after your drunk driving arrest. If you do drink too much, stay in town. That’s what credit cards are for. Here are the participating saloons:

• Mill Creek Tavern, 42nd & Chester
• Smokey Joe’s, 40th & Walnut
• The Blarney Stone , 3929 Sansom Street
• O’Hara’s Fish House, 39th & Chestnut
• Cavanuagh’s, 39th & Sansom
• Bridgewater Pub, 30th Street Station
• Mace’s Crossing, 17th & Benjamin Franklin Parkway
• Green Room,1940 Green Street
• Kelliann’s, 16th & Spring Garden
• Parkway Bar & Grille, 22nd & Spring Garden
• Westy’s, 1440 Callowhill Street
• T.A. Flannery’s, 11 South 21st Street
• Bonner’s Irish Pub, 23rd & Sansom
• Callahan’s Grille, 26th & South
• Tom Hagan’s Tavern, 20th & Arch

Teetotaller? Here’s some fun events on Saturday for you too:

• Grainne Hambly and William Jackson, masters of the Celtic Harp, at the Cultural Center of Chester County
• Mick Moloney at the Appel Farm Arts and Music Center in Elmer, NJ
• Jamison at the Dover Elks Lodge in Dover, DE

And on Sunday? The parade! It starts at 11AM (and we don’t mean 11 Irish time) at Broad and Washington Streets and heads down to the reviewing stands on the Parkway, near the Irish flag. And afterwards, you could just go home and look at your digital pictures, or you could go to one of the post parade parties (at Slainte, New Deck Tavern, the Irish Center, or the Kensington String Band HQ, where they’ll have the tireless Jamison and a group of Irish dancers).

But that’s not all. If you have the energy, you can see:

• The Irish Rovers at the Grand Opera House in Dover, DE
• Grainne Hambly and William Jackson at the Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown, NJ
• Tommy Fleming at Penn
• Dervish at the Sellersville theater

And it won’t even be St. Patrick’s Day yet!

One event next week to put on your calendar: The Ancient Order of Hibernians Div. 1 of Swedesburg is holding its third annual Irish Coffee contest on Thursday, March 13. Come for a free taste. Or two. Or three. Definitely worth coming out for on a school night.

As always, check our soon-to-be-canonized calendar for all the whiskey-laced details.

Are you getting excited? It’s less than two weeks till March madness starts, and while we’re all about resting up for big events, there are still plenty of do-not-miss Irish activities in February.

Like this weekend’s concert at the Irish Center by Matt and Shannon Heaton, once part of the critically acclaimed Irish band, Siucra. This multi-talented couple from Massachusetts blend traditional and original tunes, with Matt on guitar and Shannon on flute. Those of you who attend the Catskills Irish Arts Weekend know the Heatons and may even have sat in on their workshops. In fact, they’re offering workshops before the concert, which starts at 8 PM on Saturday.

If you’re in the Allentown area, stop by Jack Callaghan’s Ale House on Tilghman Street to help raise money for the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, scheduled for March 30. See our calendar for all the great events leading up to Allentown’s parade, including a Mass and pre-parade breakfast. They’re also promising a coronation. We’re not sure what that is, but the King of Prussia had better watch out.

On Sunday, the Celtic Fiddle Festival arrives at the Sellersville Theater. See our review of the remarkable new CD by these four amazing musicians, each representing a different take on Celtic music.

On Monday, the Ladies AOH Division 4 of Delaware County will attend a Mass in celebration of the feast of St. Brigid (a County Louth girl) at The Church of Notre Dame de Lourdes on Fairview Road in Swarthmore. For those not familiar with the lives of the saints, Brigid refused many offers of marriage to become a nun, founding the Convent of Cill-Dara, now Kildare. She was a good friend of St. Patrick.

Of course, Finnegan’s Wake is still playing at the Showboat Casino in Atlantic City (featuring The Barley Boys). On Thursday, you can hear the local group, The Shantys, at McKinley’s Tavern in Elkins Park, and the dynamic duo of Kathy DeAngelo and Dennis Gormley (McDermott’s Handy) at the Bridgeton Public Library in Bridgeton, NJ.

The first parade of the season is March 1. They’ll be stepping out on High Street in Mount Holly for the annual Burlington County event. That weekend is jam-packed with events, so check our calendar before checking yours.

Tonight, check out the work of artist Pat Gallagher, formerly of Ardmore, on exhibit all month at Advanced Medical Solutions in Doylestown. Read more about Pat in our feature story. He’ll be on hand at 6:30 PM to meet and greet. Chat him up–he’s a real hoot. And bring your checkbook.

On Sunday, we hear there’s going to be a pig roast at The Irish Times, the newest incarnation of the Blarney at 629 S. Second Street in Philadelphia, to help local Irish people celebrate the Superbowl. Roast a pig and I’ll watch football too. Sounds like great fun.

On Friday, February 8, talented musician and comic Seamus Kennedy is performing at Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster to help raise money to send high schoolers to Australia this year for World Youth Day. Wood happens to be the alma mater of the staff of www.irishphiladelphia.com. We salute you, alma mater, hail with pride your honored seal. (Jeff, I don’t remember a seal, do you? We didn’t even have a pool.)

For our Jersey friends, and fans of Irish dancing everywhere: Head up to New Brunswick Friday night, February 8, to see the Trinity Irish Dancers do their thing. This group has been featured in feature films by Disney, Dream Works, Touchstone, and Universal, countless national television programs and won two Emmy® Awards for their appearance on the PBS Television Specials “One Step Beyond” and “World Stage,” and performance in ABC’s special “Dignity of Children,” hosted by Oprah Winfrey.

In between, there are sessions galore all over the map–and all over our calendar. Check it out. And check out our St. Paddy’s Day calendar. If you’re a Philly St. Paddy’s Day virgin, you should know that we celebrate the day all month because, well, that’s the way we are.

Unfortunately, there are clashing events on Saturday night, all worthy. Here are your choices:

On Saturday, starting at 6:30 PM, Irish Northern Aid will mark the 26th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday killings in Derry, followed by an awards dinner honoring Kathy McGee Burns of the St. Patrick’s Day Observance Association, Charlie Schlegel of Irish Northern Aid and Bob Grover of Clan na Gael.

A Beef and Beer Benefit at the National Guard Armory, starting at 7 PM, will raise funds for the family of Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy, who was gunned down last year when he tried to foil a robbery in West Oak Lane.

There will be music, dancing, and great food when the Philadelphia County National Convention of the AOH holds its annual fundraiser at St. Dominic’s Hall in Philadelphia, starting at 8 PM.

You can find more details on our Oscar-nominated calendar (best calendar in a musical comedy).

The best way to be Irish this weekend is to head over to the Irish Center on Saturday night to hear a quartet of talented musicians bring to life the music of Traditional Music Hall of Famer Ed Reavy. If you’ve ever been to a session—that’s an informal gathering of musicians—you’ve probably heard a Reavy tune or two. (For more info, read Part 1 and Part 2 of our story on Reavy.) Since most of his famous pieces are hornpipes, you probably tapped your feet or drummed your table too. Maybe you even got up and danced.

Well, you can get up and dance on Saturday night too. You’ll certainly be joined by Reavy’s son, Ed Jr., who, with his wife, Mary, is as smooth as butter on the dance floor. (He’s been a dance teacher for decades, since before the resurgence of interest in Irish dancing. “I started teaching so I could find a partner,” he told us recently.)

The Reavy concert, which will feature fiddler Jim Eagan, bodhran player Myron Bretholz, banjo player Peter Fitzgerald, and guitarist Andy Thurston, is also your chance to relive a little Philadelphia history, to go back to a time when this music was played in a parlor, cleared of furniture so the dancers would have a place to twirl.

If you’re in Delaware, Green Willow is presenting an inventive program of fiddling featuring five masters of Scottish, Irish, and Appalachian styles, also on Saturday night.

It’s thankfully quiet after the holidays, Celtically speaking, but there’s an event coming up that needs some explanation. On January 13, St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Lafayette Hill (around the corner from Brittingham’s) is holding a Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival.

Like you, at first I wondered what fascination the Lutherans had with lunch meat.  Really pricey lunch meat, too. But I did some digging. This pageant–a British import dating back to 1340–harks back to a time when boar was the first dish served at a medieval banquet. It was the prime rib of its day. A secular tradition, it eventually took on Christian overtones: The boar’s head, served at Christmas time, began to symbolize the triumph of the infant Jesus over sin, good over evil.

 Legend has it the holiday event was born when a scholar at Queen’s College in Oxford encountered a wild boar on his travels and, having no other weapon, rammed a philosophy book down its throat, choking it to death. Later that night, the scholar and his colleagues enjoyed roasted boar’s head, which was brought into the dining hall by carolers singing “in honor of the King of Bliss.”

As time went on, the Boar’s Head pageant included the story of the nativity, the Three Kings, Good King Wencelas, carolers, mince pie and plum pudding, and a Yule log, lit from last year’s ember.

The festival was first celebrated in the US the 1800s in Troy, NY, with music described as “exquisite.”

 Expect beautiful music and pageantry at St. Peter’s annual staging (delayed this year because of renovations to the beautiful 256-year-old church), which includes some 200 performers, crew, and prop masters, not to mention the Cameron Highland Pipe Band (ah, you knew there was a Celtic connection, didn’t you?). A harpist will play “Silent Night” with a full orchestra accompaniment. You’ll think you’re in the 14th century.

For more information, go to www.stpeterslafayettehill.org, or call 610-828-3098.

Looking ahead: Irish Northern Aid rescheduled its 26th annual testimonial dinner for Saturday, January 26, at the Irish Center. Among the honorees are Kathy McGee Burns of the Donegal Society and the St. Patrick’s Day Observance Association; Charlie Schlegel of Irish Northern Aid and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and Bob Grover of Clan na Gael. There will also be a mass in observance of the 26th anniversary of what is called Bloody Sunday, the clash between Irish protestors and British Troops in Derry that rekindled a war that has only recently given way to a wary peace.

That same evening, there will be a Beef and Beer Benefit for the family of slain Philadelphia police officer Chuck Cassidy–a long-time AOHer–at the National Guard Armory in northeast Philadelphia. For more information, contact the 35th District at 215-685-2854. Tickets are $25.

As always, see our calendar for more details and maps.

If you think that a typical Irish event involves music, dancing, singing, eating and drinking, you’d be right. And that’s a fair description of a “Wren Party,” a traditional Irish get-together that celebrates. . .well, maybe “celebrates” isn’t the right word to describe a tradition that once involved killing a bird and carrying its carcass from door to door, begging for handouts. Sounds too much like a holiday envisioned by Wes Craven, even though a saint was involved. Anyway, today it’s just a lot of singing and dancing and fun-having, and there’s one scheduled for December 26 at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Glenside.

Not to your taste? How about checking out 2U, the U2 Tribute Band in concert at the Sellersville Theater? They’re not Bono Lite either. They out-edge The Edge (do his friends call him “The?”). 

And you still have time to pick out your costume for the New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball at the Irish Center. It’s a great deal: For $50 a person, there’s an open bar, dinner, dancing to the music of Vince Gallagher and John Kelly, and, since you’ll be wearing a mask, you can make a fool of yourself and no one will be mocking you the next day. At least, not by name.