BOSTON (AP) – St. Patrick’s Day is getting to be like the Christmas shopping season – it seems to start earlier each year.

Lt. Gov. Tim Murray was a guest at three separate St. Patrick’s Day breakfasts Sunday. It was the first of three consecutive weekends filled with Irish-themed events, culminating with the annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast and parade in South Boston on March 18.

“It’s the high holidays of March,” Murray said.

Kyle Sullivan, spokesman for Gov. Deval Patrick, noted that the competition for musicians and guests and banquet halls is keen in this most-Irish of states. “Everyone goes to the breakfast in South Boston, so you can’t have it on that day. So they started doing them a week early. And then people started having them two weeks early. It’s a whole month. It’s like March madness,” Sullivan said.

Rep. James Murphy, D-Weymouth, said he hosts his annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast on the first Sunday in March because it’s easier to get the stepdancers and Irish bands on the earlier date.

Murphy served traditional breakfast food – eggs, bacon, French toast – instead of corned beef, but he said about 400 people, most of them wearing green, showed up for the event at the Weymouth Elks lodge.

“For all intents and purposes, today is St. Patrick’s Day,” Murphy said.

Rep. Michael Rush held his annual breakfast Sunday at the Corrib Pub in the heart of his legislative district in Boston’s West Roxbury section. Rush aide Matt Fitzgerald said his boss switched his event to the first weekend in March last year after previously holding it on the second weekend of the month.

“People are having these events throughout the month, so you try to accommodate them,” he said. Fitzgerald said no Guinness was served at the 9 a.m. get-together, just coffee and juice.

Recent Census figures proved Massachusetts to be the nation’s most Irish state, with roughly 25 percent of respondents identifying themselves as being of Irish heritage.

With so many people eager to celebrate their ethnic pride, more than one St. Patrick’s Day weekend is required.

Abington, Lawrence and Worcester will hold their parades next weekend, with Boston, Holyoke and Scituate staging their processions on March 18 this year.

Murray, the former mayor of Worcester, will be on hand for the festivities in his hometown before joining his boss the next week for the South Boston breakfast – a who’s who of Massachusetts politicians roasting each other in a televised event.

“Hopefully, it’s a sign that spring is not too far off,” he said.