Why I Love Independence Day (a somewhat anglophilic meditation)

Yeah, I know it's old news now, but I love Independence Day.

The one year I had to work on the 4th, I realized just how important it was to me. All I wanted was to be home on the porch drinking a beer with my mom, dutifully twirling sparklers as is our wont, and hoping somebody in the neighborhood sprung for the illegal stuff.

I'm all for patriotism. The World Cup brings it out in me, as does any conversation with equally patriotic people from other countries who want to insist their nation has the best fill-in-the-blank. I will rise to that occasion. I even defend patriotism to other Americans, when I'm wearing my Walt Whitman t-shirt. Come to think of it, I don't know if I'm patriotic so much as contrary.

But I'm more than willing to go with the grain on the 4th of July. July 4th, or Independence Day, or American Independence Day, is a holiday that requires only one thing of us: purchasing and setting off explosives made in China. And I love fireworks, more and more with each passing year.* Not even an accompanying country music soundtrack can sully their beauty (country music, at least much of the commercial variety of today, is an art form the aesthetics of which are irreconcilably opposed to my own, and is no more distinctly American than hip-hop...but i guess you've got to play to your demographic). I did enjoy singing "God Bless The U.S.A." for the first time since grade school. This was at a baseball game, another event I like to observe by drinking beer and more or less ignoring the point. They also played Minnie The Moocher while clearing the field, to general delight.


Another recent addition to the list of things I love about the 4th: no-hard-feelings tweets from English celebrities. Nice to know they haven't forgotten us, even though apparently 26% of us have forgotten them.


*Amusingly, I used to hate fireworks, because they were loud. I've since lost much of my hearing, so it's all good now.