Hannah Jones/Winonan

There’s a common saying: “everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.” Going by looks, it seemed to hold up at Winona State University for 2014’s installment.

Winona had a rare stretch of green in an otherwise wintry March. Students dressed up in droves to show St. Patrick’s Day spirit, sporting green shirts, sweaters, headbands and ties with four-leaf clovers on them.

But, for most students, the color was as far as it went. Gina Scott, a freshman from Stacy, Minn., is not, in fact, Irish, not even on St. Patrick’s Day.

She did, however, wear an obligatory green headband and eye makeup.

“Just a little,” she said, “So I don’t get yelled at.”

For many students, St. Patrick’s Day is just a day with a dress code—and an opportunity to heckle those who don’t observe it.

“My friend Claire has red hair and freckles,” Scott said. “People are always asking her, ‘are you Irish? Where’s your green?’”

Beyond the green rule, Scott said, she’s not actually certain what St. Patrick’s Day is about. Since she has a night class on Monday nights, her plans were to stay in—and not get heckled.

St. Patrick’s Day is a different story for theatre major Brett Burger, a sophomore from Andover, Minn.

“I was heckling people,” he said.

Burger was dressed to the nines for St. Patrick’s Day with a pair of Kelly green baseball shorts, a neon green zip-up hoodie and a pair of loud, knee-high green socks. He takes St. Patrick’s Day seriously, namely because he is Irish every day of the year.

He wasn’t shy about it.

“If you haven’t seen ‘Luck of the Irish,’ you’re a communist,” Burger said.

Celebrating with him was Bekah Bailey, who has a theatre major and an Irish heritage in common with Burger. The two of them had grabbed shamrock shakes from McDonald’s earlier to mark the occasion, and Bailey was dressed in a dark green sweater for her St. Patrick’s Day attire. She recalled past St. Patrick’s Days she spent celebrating back in her home in Coon Rapids, Minn.

“St. Patrick’s Day was always low-key with the fam-bam,” she said.

In spite of the common aphorism, an American St. Patrick’s Day, Bailey said, is actually a very different animal from its Irish counterpart, which has its roots in Catholic traditions.

For one thing, there’s less running to McDonald’s for those shamrock shakes.

“A lot of [stores] are closed,” she said.

And what about those four-leaf clovers?

“Four-leaf clovers are actually not the right thing,” Bailey said. “The three leaves are supposed to be the Holy Trinity.”

The two were looking forward to more St. Patrick’s Day festivities later that evening. Whether Irish or not, Burger said, everyone had a free ticket to celebrate.

“I welcome thee to the Irish clan,” he said.