It may be the color of St. Patrick’s Day, but previous generations of Irish saw green as the color of death.
It may be the color associated with St. Patrick’s Day, but Irish people feared the color green for much of their history.
Green, now associated with St. Patrick and the rich colors of Irish grassland, was associated with fever and death by previous generations.
That was likely exacerbated by the Irish potato famine from 1845 to 1852, in which more than a million people died of starvation. People sometimes took on a green pallor before they died, adding to people’s anxiety about the color.
It shows that the Irish were deeply superstitious and afraid to wear green.
