OPINION: You’re Free on Independence Day

There’s no prescribed way to celebrate July 4th. And that’s the best part of it.
Donald Trump is recruiting some Abrams tanks and obsessing about some of the choreography for an Independence Day parade in Washington D.C. He wants it to be militaristic, bombastic, and he wants to be at the center of it. I couldn’t care less. And, I wonder why anyone else does.

I can’t remember ever paying attention to how this day was celebrated in the capital city. In recent years I’ve taken my kids to a minor league baseball game in Hartford. Or spent time at my in-laws having a a small family cookout. When I was in my twenties and trying to win over the woman who is now my wife, we went to a park and saw an outdoor orchestra attempt to time the very Russian 1812 Overture to a fireworks show. There’s something delightful about celebrating with artifacts from these two supposed geopolitical rivals. I remember one year spent at our beloved Sea Isle City, in New Jersey, and watching as the legal professionals and illegal amateurs put on fireworks shows up the coast, stretching upward through Ocean City to Atlantic City. This year we’re escaping our hot apartment and taking the kids to an indoor waterpark and resort.

There have been recurring elements. The fireworks and hotdogs. Family time. But there’s no prescribed way to celebrate July 4th. And that’s the best part of it. Thanksgiving is governed by family traditions. Christmas is governed by religious ones. New Years, at least for the young and single, is governed by the manic desire to find someone to kiss at midnight. July 4th is whatever you make of it.

July 4th commemorates a political event — the signing of the Declaration: a document full of ideological claims and a fair bit of rip-roaring propaganda. (Damn you King George, for allowing free worship for French-speaking Catholics in a neighboring territory!) But our July 4th celebrations are remarkably non-ideological.

Other nations are not so blessed. I spent a few years reflecting on the meaning of Irish independence, which is celebrated according to the liturgical year, attached to Easter Monday. The Irish are often subjected to an ideological excavation of their independence. And they have had reasons in living memory to look around with some sadness, and ask “Was it for this?”