Google doodle is green for St. Patrick’s Day: Take our redheaded quiz

Google is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with a stained-glass doodle in green. On Sunday, Americans celebrated Irish ancestry across the nation, with traditional parades in London, Boston, Montreal, New York and other cities.

West Boylston, Mass., even held what it billed as the world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade -- participants marched 75 feet from Finder’s pub to Keeper’s pub.

Many of them then likely lifted a pint to the patron saint of Ireland. Legend has it, Patrick himself tippled. And tippling till you’re green in the face is a uniquely American tradition. Guinness is a favorite St. Paddy’s elixir in the U.S. Americans drink about 3 million pints of the Irish beer each St. Patrick’s Day, USA Today reports.

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Green, notably, is not the color originally associated with St. Patrick. There’s a shade of blue known as “St. Patrick’s blue.” When Prince Albert was installed as a knight of St. Patrick in Dublin in April 1868, newspaper archives show, he wore “sky-blue robes,” wife Alexandra wore a “bright blue silk dress with a bonnet of the same color,” and the ceremony was held on a dias with two blue armchairs shaded by a sky-blue canopy.

Still, Ireland is unquestionably green. It’s the Emerald Isle, not the Periwinkle Isle. Politics helped to cement green as Ireland’s representative color.

The wearing of the green -- a shamrock in your lapel -- became a symbol of Irish Catholic nationalism. And with the 1798 Irish Rebellion, green garments became symbolic of Irish pride.

Check out our quiz below for other great Irish-related trivia, and happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I’m a quarter Irish. Follow me @AmyTheHub.