Independence From What?
Badpatty posted the following observation:
I saw a comment from The Steve that made me stop and think. He asked what Americans do to celebrate Independence Day. To a subject of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I suppose that's a perfectly logical question. How do people celebrate no longer being tied and subservient to another nation?
Sadly, the truth of the matter is that the majority of Americans celebrate in much the same manner as those celebrating all kinds of holidays across the world. They don't go to work, they get drunk, grill meat and blow shit up. While I don't have anything against any of those notions, I don't think that they encompass all of what it is that we're trying to celebrate.
So let's present my July 4 as an example. An example of what, I don't know.
Because of my spur of the moment trip to Arizona and back, I didn't wake up until around 10:30 in the morning or so. After some breakfast and some final housecleaning, we took off toward Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to pick up some Finnish houseguests. One of them had been to the U.S. before, but not on July 4, and the other celebrated July 4 in Williams, Arizona once. After briefly explaining to the first one that July 4 marked our "declaration of independence" from Britain, we then proceeded to a family barbecue and then to KABOOM!
KABOOM! is Pomona, California's annual July 4 celebration, held at Fairplex. Luckily for us, we got there in time for that great patriotic event...the Monster Truck Rally.
You'd think that there would be monster truck rallies all over the 909, but this was the first one that I had ever attended. As someone who is glued to the TV set every time that there's a freeway chase, I was enjoying the monster truck rally immensely.
After the bikers did their tricks, and the monster trucks did their thing (with one truck falling on its side in the process), everything was ready for The Fire Truck.
And yes, it was a fire truck. It looked like a fire truck, it sounded like a fire truck. And, when it got in front of a pickup truck, it spit out fire, incinerating the pickup.
As Butt-Head would say, "Cool."
To be fair, the fireworks show afterwards did include music, much of which had a patriotic theme, and there was a military color guard before the monster truck show, but still the effect was pretty much that of a big party.
However, is there ANY holiday that is celebrated "properly"? Our Lord's birth is an orgy of purchasing (as is the Maccabean celebration of Jewish independence), His death and resurrection is a chocolate party with rabbits, the birthday of our internationally known civil rights hero is an excuse for a sale, Memorial Day and Labor Day are beach weekends.
I think that we need to declare a holiday called "Party Day." At least that would be celebrated in line with our original intentions.
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