County St. Paddy Fete Greens the Orange : Celebration: Thousands of Irish and non-Irish alike mark the saint’s day with step dancers, bagpipers, a parade and plenty of Irish beer.

At an Irish pub in Seal Beach, they celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with an old-fashioned wake of sorts.

An open casket was laid out across the bar’s pool table, and dozens of people stopped in to sneak a peek at the coffin. Inside was a stuffed doll wearing a bumper sticker that said, “Kiss me, I’m Irish.”

“It’s a comic thing. It’s not meant to be morbid,” Irisher Pub owner Robert Campregher said of the ghoulish St. Patrick’s Day tradition. “I had to stick a bolt through his neck, though, because last year some people stole the head and wouldn’t give it back.”

Elsewhere in Orange County, thousands of Irish and non-Irish alike donned bright green and pinned shamrocks to their lapels Saturday to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with step dancers, bagpipers, a parade and plenty of Irish beer.

It was the most popular day of the year to be Irish. If you weren’t, it was good day to fake it.

Several leprechauns--or at least small children dressed up as Irish imps--were spotted on floats inching along Olympiad Road in Mission Viejo. There, high school bands and homecoming queens, clowns, equestrians, baton twirlers, politicians, youth groups, floats and motorcades of classic cars--even Irish-made Deloreans--paraded for two hours before enthusiastic green-clad onlookers.

Elsewhere, revelers flocked to area pubs to party. The Guinness and Budweiser were flowing, sometimes dyed green just for the occasion. After a few beers, jolly strangers became instant buddies, old-timers reminisced about the old days back in Ireland and dancers clicked their heels and twirled each other about in reels.

On this particular day, Kay Grimm, 58, was not answering to anything but Kay Fitzgerald McMillen, a combination of both her Irish parents’ surnames.

“This is the one time of the year when I can go out and find my roots,” said Grimm, a real estate appraiser, flashing a sticker that read, “Whiskey makes me frisky.”

She added: “I like to come out and appreciate being Irish.”

Grimm was among hundreds of celebrators who poured into the Harp Inn, a popular Irish pub in Costa Mesa. There, regulars swapped tall tales, delighting first-timers and those who simply came out to rub elbows with the Irish. Irish patrons basked in their glory, thickening their brogues to spin yarns between mouthfuls of corned beef hash and cabbage. A few Irish immigrants huddled together at the bar and tried to persuade one of their buddies to say a few words in Gaelic.

A few snickered when they caught wind of the words of a song that Annie Murphy, an Irish-American, was belting above the roar of the crowd: It was a woman’s lament that her husband had changed for the worse after their marriage.

Kevin Niland, 44, had apparently done his share of kissing the Blarney stone. Niland, a cabinetmaker from western Ireland, was full of the gift of gab, entertaining a small crowd with a steady stream of ghoulish jokes.

“In Ireland, whenever someone dies we get together to celebrate the poor devil’s death,” said Niland of Huntington Beach. “We always say, a good wake is better than a bad wedding.”

Others raised their glasses to an old Irish toast: “May you be in heaven an hour before the devil knows you are dead.”

The revelers came from Oregon, New York and as far away as London to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with friends in Orange County. Many weren’t even Irish. “I come here every St. Patrick’s Day because they just don’t celebrate it in England and Ireland like they do here,” said Clive Collins, 29, of London.

“Even in Ireland, they’ll have a couple of drinks, but it’s not as commercialized as it is here.”