The first time I celebrated St Patrick’s Day in Chicago, it was a quarter past six on a cold Saturday morning, and I had already been pinched by three strangers.

I had not even ordered a coffee.

The pub was packed wall to wall with people in green hats, green shirts, green wigs, and one man who appeared to have committed fully to the role of shamrock. Music blasted from the speakers, bacon sizzled somewhere behind the bar, and glasses of bright green beer clinked together as if it were midnight instead of barely after sunrise.

Meanwhile, I stood there in perfectly ordinary clothes.

This, as it turns out, was a mistake.

Back home in Liverpool, when I was a wee lad, St Patrick’s Day passed quietly. Our street had plenty of Irish families, and the day might bring a bit of music drifting from the pub, perhaps a fiddle somewhere down the road. Someone’s mother might cook cabbage, the sweet, earthy smell slipping through open windows. In the evening, a few men might gather for a quiet pint and a song.

It was gentle. Familiar. Almost ordinary.

No green rivers.

No leprechaun hats.

And certainly no drinking at six in the morning.

Which is why my first St Patrick’s Day in Chicago came as something of a surprise.

It began with a simple invitation.

“Mate,” said my friend Davey Donnelly one afternoon, “we’re doing Kegs and Eggs. Six o’clock.”

I assumed he meant six in the evening.

He did not.

Six in the morning.

Now, six in the morning is not normally a drinking time. Six in the morning is when you put the kettle on and try to remember what day it is. Yet in Chicago, on the Saturday of St Patrick’s weekend, six in the morning is apparently the perfect time to begin a celebration.

Wanting to be a good sport, I set my alarm and walked through the cold towards a neighbourhood pub.

The air had that sharp Midwestern bite that turns your breath to mist and wakes you quicker than any coffee. The streets were quiet, but the pub ahead of me was already glowing. A neon Guinness sign hummed softly in the window.

When I pushed open the door, the room was alive.

Six in the morning, and the place was already humming like a late-night dive bar. Chicago had clearly made a decision. If we were going to celebrate, we would start early and see where the day might take us.

Music poured from the speakers. Glasses clinked. Laughter bounced off the wooden walls. The smell of frying bacon mingled with coffee, beer and a hint of cologne that had been applied with great optimism.

And everything was green.

Green hats.

Green shirts.

Green wigs.

Green plastic beads hung from a ceiling fan that turned lazily overhead.

The shamrock stood proudly at the bar, swaying slightly like a cheerful houseplant.

And I, of course, had arrived in completely ordinary clothes.

Within thirty seconds, someone pinched my arm.

“You’re not wearing green!” the stranger said cheerfully.

Another friendly pinch followed.

Then another.

By the end of the morning, my arm looked as though I had wandered through a field of particularly enthusiastic crabs.

Apparently, if you forget to wear green on St Patrick’s Day, strangers feel duty-bound to remind you with a playful pinch.

Eventually, I spotted my friends near the bar.

Davey Donnelly was already on his second green beer. Davey always seemed to be two beers ahead of everyone else in the room.

Next to him stood Big Tommy from Wigan, wearing a leprechaun costume that had clearly been designed for a smaller gentleman. The fabric stretched across him with heroic determination.

“Jon!” Davey shouted. “You made it!”

Big Tommy raised his pint.

“Breakfast beer?”

Someone handed me one.

The beer had been dyed a shade of green so enthusiastic it could probably have been seen from space.

I stared at the glass.

Beer already has a perfectly good colour. Yet on this particular morning, the entire city seemed to agree that beer should look festive.

At the far end of the bar sat an older gentleman in a small green tie. He nursed a pint of Guinness slowly and watched the room with the calm patience of someone who had seen a great many St Patrick’s Days come and go.

The bartender came over.

“What can I get you?”

“I’ll have an Irish coffee,” I said.

Then I leaned in slightly.

“And leave out the whiskey.”

He gave me a look that suggested I was either very responsible or deeply confused.

The coffee arrived hot and fragrant. Steam curled into the warm pub air while laughter rolled across the room and the yeasty smell of beer drifted through the bar.

At the far end of the room, a chap stood up and announced he had a joke.

Now, when a man stands up in a pub at seven in the morning and declares he has a joke, expectations are naturally modest.

But this one landed beautifully.

“A Texan walks into a pub in Ireland,” he began, “and says to the crowd, ‘I hear you Irish are hard drinkers. I’ll give five hundred American dollars to anyone here who can drink ten pints of Guinness back to back.’”

The pub falls silent.

No one volunteers.

One man even leaves.

Thirty minutes later, the same fellow returns and taps the Texan on the shoulder.

“Is your bet still good?” he asks.

The bartender lines up ten pints of Guinness.

The Irishman drinks them all without stopping.

The pub erupts in cheers.

The Texan hands over the five hundred dollars and asks, “If you don’t mind me asking, where did you go for those thirty minutes?”

And the Irishman replies, “Oh, I just popped down to the pub on the corner to see if I could do it first.”

The room exploded with laughter, and I nearly spilled my coffee.

Around half past seven, the kitchen doors opened and the buffet appeared.

Scrambled eggs in large trays. Sausages. Bacon. Pancakes stacked like a leaning tower.

Big Tommy approached the buffet with the quiet determination of a man who understood that on St Patrick’s Day, breakfast is not really a meal. It is a survival strategy.

By nine, the room had reached that wonderful stage where strangers were hugging, the bartender had stopped asking questions, and everyone seemed perfectly happy to see where the day might lead.

Then someone shouted, “Time to see the river!”

Coats were grabbed. Hats straightened. Green wigs bounced through the doorway as we all headed downtown.

Thousands of people lined the bridges along the Chicago River. The cold air smelled of coffee, beer and the faint metallic scent of the water below.

Somewhere nearby, a pot of corned beef and cabbage simmered in a restaurant kitchen, the warm, salty smell drifting through the crisp morning air.

For a moment, the crowd fell quiet. Thousands of people leaned over the railings, watching the water and waiting to see if the river would actually turn green.

Of course it did.

The green spread through the current like ink in water, curling and drifting beneath the bridges.

Chicago is not the sort of city that does anything by halves.

The crowd erupted.

As the people slowly drifted away from the bridges and the river returned to its ordinary colour, our little group wandered through the streets of downtown Chicago.

By now, the cold air and the early start had done their work.

I was starving.

You might think that after a morning celebrating St Patrick’s Day, I would finally sit down to a plate of corned beef and cabbage.

But Chicago had other plans.

Someone pointed towards a small storefront with a queue spilling out onto the pavement.

Al’s Beef.

Inside, the air was thick with the smell of roast beef, garlic and bread that had soaked up just enough gravy to promise glorious trouble.

I ordered my first Chicago Italian beef sandwich.

The roll was warm and soft. The beef was piled high and dripping with jus. The peppers were sharp and bright. One bite, and the juices ran down my fingers.

It was messy. Magnificent. Completely unapologetic.

After a morning of green beer and shamrock hats, the most honest meal in Chicago turned out to be a dripping Italian beef sandwich eaten standing at the counter.

And it struck me as perfectly fitting.

I had come out to celebrate an Irish holiday in an American city, started the morning with green beer in a crowded pub, watched a river turn emerald, and ended up eating an Italian beef sandwich.

Only in America could a celebration wander so cheerfully across cultures and cuisines.

Chicago is such a special city, and I could not think of a better place to celebrate St Patrick’s Day.

Because at its heart, the day was still the same.

A bit of music.

A good story.

A laugh shared with friends.

Just a little earlier in the morning.

And with considerably greener beer than anyone in Liverpool would have believed possible.

By breakfast my arm looked crab bitten, and every pinch had been a welcome. Chicago taught me that a good sport gets a better morning than a sensible man.

A question for you: When did you last join in before you felt ready?