Over the last few years, I've sensed a subtle difference in the way much of America celebrates the 4th of July—a difference from the way it was a hundred, fifty, even twenty years ago. Today the main components of Independence Day celebration seem to be an attitude of "yay America is awesome" plus indiscriminate praise of everything military, past or present. There's a strong flavor of "we" and "us" about the celebrations...a sense that we're awesome just because we're here, without much thought of how we happened to get here.
I feel that we've lost sight of the fact that our national holiday was originally intended to commemorate a specific occasion, and not just...all about us. That we're meant to be remembering something that, you know, somebody else did. A momentous step that someone else took. We'd do well to readjust our focus so that we're not merely cheering the fact that we exist, but acknowledging that, like it or not, we are where we are and what we are because we stand on the achievements of past generations.
And you know, if you want to celebrate military heroes, then for today let it be the soldiers of the Revolution. We do actually have other holidays dedicated to the veterans and the fallen of other wars—the Fourth ought to belong in greatest part to the boys of '76. And '77. And all the way through to '83. For after all, every American can talk glibly of George Washington and Paul Revere and Bunker Hill and Valley Forge and Yorktown; but how often do we take a day, or even just a few minutes, to consider what the War of Independence meant in practical experience to the lives of the rank-and-file privates who marched and fought in the Continental Army? Especially since, for most of us, they were our very own direct ancestors.
I've stood on a quiet hilltop beside a replica cannon and looked down on a river that now has an asphalt highway running alongside it, and strained my imagination perceptibly trying to picture what it was like with earthworks thrown up along the brow of the hill. I've walked a paved path through a wood and tried to imagine it filled with the smoke from the long rifles of buckskin-clad sharpshooters who helped turn the tide in the battle of Saratoga. It's not so easy to do. We're so darn civilized, you know. We know that just down the road is an intersection with a gas station and traffic lights and convenience store and all the other strands of the safety net of modern civilization that makes us feel so sure of ourselves. It's not so easy now for us to imagine what it would be like to be a man or woman living on an isolated farm tucked among the hills, knowing there were troops encamped just over the ridge and that any moment there might be a bloody battle fought in your cornfield and your dooryard.
The closest I've ever come, I think—ironically—is standing and watching a fireworks show, hearing the loudest explosions rebound off nearby hills and buildings and feeling the concussion rattle in my chest, and thinking: is this what cannon fire is like?
Our traditions have taken shape over the years so that for most of us, celebrating involves picnic food and things that go pop and bang. And there's nothing wrong with that a-tall. (I lean towards potato salad myself.) Picnic and have fun and enjoy the holiday. But just pause for a moment, between sparklers, and think back to your great-grandfather-times-ten tramping down a dusty road in worn-out shoes with a musket on his shoulder. Think for a moment, and wonder.
Happy Independence Day!
photo: Saratoga National Battlefield, taken by myself