Watch: St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Dublin, Ireland (live video)

DUBLIN, Ireland – Hours before St. Patrick’s Day revelers living in the United States were even awake, celebrations were underway in Ireland.

A live stream from Dublin shows thousands of people filling the streets in the Temple Bar area, a neighborhood along the south banks of the River Liffey known for pubs, dining and music. Dublin is five hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast.

Tune in to see lots of green — outfits, top hats, scarves and deely bobbers — people mingling outside the pubs and dancing in the street and people cloaked in Irish flags.

The Feast of Saint Patrick has been celebrated in Ireland for 1,000 years. For most of that time, it was a religious holiday.

Saint Patrick is credited with bringing Christianity to the then-pagan Ireland. Many symbols and legends associated with Ireland come from Saint Patrick, who is said to have used Celtic symbols such as leprechauns, believed to be meddlesome fairies, to connect the country to Christianity. Legend is that Saint Patrick Shamrocks (three-leaved clovers) as a symbol of the church, using their three leaves to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity.

In 1903, the Irish government ordered that the pubs be closed on March 17. It remained that way into the 1970s, according to euronews.culture.

The parades we associate with St. Patrick’s Day didn’t even originate in Ireland – they began in the United States. The first was in Boston in the late 18th century.

In the 1990s, the Irish government sought to bolster tourism with a national campaign centered on St. Patrick’s Day. It drew visitors to the nation and displayed Irish culture to the world.

Today, it is celebrated as a day of merriment, with drinking, feasting, music and parades where many dress up as leprechauns.