THE FOURTH OF JULY: HOW WE CELEBRATE
A dig into the archives finds 1873 editorial and perspective on holiday
It’s that time of year again when fresh flags sway in the summer breeze and Americans tip their hats to Independence Day with barbecues and parades and night skies lit up with pyrotechnic starbursts — that is, when a pandemic doesn’t get in the way.
With the holiday in mind, my Flashback teammate Marianne Mather and I dug into our archives to find a fitting salute. She chose poignant photos that capture the myriad ways everyday Americans have celebrated and united over the occasion. And I stumbled across a remarkably still-relevant — and rather cranky — editorial from 1873.
This is what I found out when I read it: Americans 150 years ago did the same things we do to celebrate the holiday. For instance, they blew stuff up — and sometimes fingers, too. And they also took the meaning of the day for granted.
It’s not terribly surprising when the power of ritual fades with time. The editorial laments this. And it laments the societal ills of the day, ills that we can relate to.
But lurking in the polemic is the hope that we can recapture the meaning of the moment, that we can give birth anew to a call for independence from the tyrannies of our day.
Here is an excerpted look.
“The day we celebrate has arrived, and it is therefore incumbent upon each citizen of Chicago, we presume, to manifest the measure of patriotism which he possesses by such demonstrations in his back-yard of a Star Spangled character as best comport with his dignity and convenience, The occasion, however, which gave birth to the Fourth of July is now so remote in national history, and the American people have suffered so many petty tyrannies since the English yoke was broken, that the primal meaning of the day has become quite indistinct . ...
“The Fourth of July will have plenty of celebrators. There is no doubt of that. There will be plenty of noise. There is no doubt of that, also. There will be plenty of accidents, casualties, fines, haps and mishaps, also. There is no doubt of that, either. But still the question recurs: What are you making all the fuss about? If we must blow our legs off, and burn up our houses, and fire rockets through our neighbors’ vitals, and get patriotically drunk, and keep the everlasting bird screaming, why not have some motive for it? Why not have some method in our madness? ... There is just as good cause for a Declaration of Independence now as there was a hundred years ago. The evils which King George and his minions inflicted upon us were no worse than the evils which are now inflicted upon us in the name of loyalty. Let us declare ourselves free from the corruptions of party; from abuses of power; from the monopolies of huge, overgrown corporations; from the dictation of political bummers and scallawags; ... intolerance, bigotry, stupidity . ...
“Let us shoot off our fire-crackers for something new and vital.”