5 Ways To Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day In Long Valley

LONG VALLEY, NJ — St. Patrick’s Day is on a Friday this year. Restaurants and bars around Long Valley will be swimming in Kelly green, and perhaps flashing red and blue lights if people don’t behave themselves.

And devout Catholics may have to consult their parish priest before they dig into a plate of corned beef and cabbage.

Although last week's Morris County St. Patrick's Day Parade, one of the largest in New Jersey, was the main event for the holiday, there is still plenty to celebrate this weekend.

Some of the places in and around Long Valley to celebrate the March 17 holiday are:

• Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with an Irish concert at 7 p.m. in Madison's Grace Episcopal Church, featuring harpist Merynda Adams, soprano Sara McCabe, and recorder player Mariam Bora. The church is located at 4 Madison Avenue.
• Long Valley Brew Pub will also host St. Patrick's Day festivities, including a specials menu available Friday, March 17 through the weekend.
• Rockin’ St. Patrick’s Day Party with Mama D & The Vexations: Join Mama D for Morristown's biggest St. Patrick's Day party on Friday, March 17. Check out the town's only 23-and-up speakeasy for a fun night of Mama D tunes that will keep you dancing all evening. For more information, click here.
• Dublin Irish Dance presents Wings at 7:30 p.m. at the Mayo Performing Arts Center. Tickets are priced between $29-$59 and can be purchased at 100 South St., Morristown, 973-539-8008.
• The "Luck Of The Irish" St Patty's Day Weekend Pub Crawl will kick off on Saturday, March 18 at 12 p.m. and run until 8 p.m. The crawl will kick off at Horseshoe Tavern, located at 36 Speedwell Avenue, in Morristown. "Look for your pot of gold during our event and maybe your lucky charm will lead you there! Bar crawl at numerous locations of only the best bars in Morristown."

Devout Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent, a sacrifice that recognizes Jesus’ death on the cross on a Friday. Catholics in several suburban Chicago towns can eat the traditional fare without guilt, but the Diocese of Chicago is holding firm.

Whether revelers in cities like heavily Catholic Chicago, one of the most St. Patrick-y cities in the country, go all in with the holiday staple corned beef and cabbage could come down to whether they get special dispensation from the diocese.

Catholic revelers from Long Valley will be happy to learn that Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney of the Diocese of Paterson has granted Catholics in The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Paterson, which includes Morris County, a dispensation from the abstinence from meat on March 17 this year.

This extends to any Catholics who are in the diocese during St. Patrick's Day.

"Recognizing the faith that was brought to this community by immigrant families and missionary religious and priests, the spiritual sons and daughters of Saint Patrick, and the prominence of the Memorial in the practice of faithful Catholics of this diocese, I grant a dispensation... Those who partake of this dispensation are encouraged to undertake a work of charity or an act of comparable penance on some other occasion during the Third Week of Lent," according to Sweeney's decree.