A Kansas City Tradition

I'd never heard of the "holiday" before moving to the greater Metro. Since then, we've attended a few of the Northtown parades in addition to the traditional St Patrick's Day parade in downtown Kansas City, Missouri in the same years. My experience has been that most of the floats and marchers in both parades are the same. The downtown Kansas City St Patrick's Day parade (which we've attended more often) is pretty much a repeat of the Snake Saturday parade. Individual spectators and the route (different towns) is a bit difference between the two parades. However, that seems to be the main difference. Snake Saturday may be a more family friendly day because it's a small town event (with a big city parade) and has a lot of family friendly, community activities beyond just hitting the bars after the parade.

No matter what the weather, people from all over will gather in mass for both parades. Everyone becomes Irish for a day. Celebrating Irish roots is strong in this area with the two St Patrick's Day parades in March & 3 different Irish fests in the fall.