Independence Day – United States Holiday
What day of the year is Independence Day in the US?
On July 4, Americans celebrate their independence. The Fourth of July is a common name for the occasion.
What does July 4th entail?
The Fourth of July commemorates the Continental Congress’s adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 13 colonies in North America were officially declared to be politically independent of Great Britain by the Declaration.
Why are fireworks used to commemorate the Fourth of July?
Fireworks are a symbol of national pride and patriotism during the Fourth of July celebrations.
Since at least the 12th century, they had been used in China, and in the 15th century, European monarchs began to use them frequently to commemorate their birthdays, national victories, and the peace that had been restored.
Since the country’s first celebration of Independence Day in 1777, fireworks have been a tradition.
Why did the colonies in North America declare their independence?
On July 4, 1776, the colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence, which captured their general discontent with escalating British power.
The British government passed several controversial legislation and levies starting in 1764, including the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, and the so-called Intolerable Acts, which the colonists particularly resented.
The yearly celebration of national identity in the United States is known as Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July or July 4. It honors the Continental Congress’s adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
The Declaration of Independence was originally drafted by Thomas Jefferson in consultation with fellow committee members John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and William Livingston.
The Congress had approved independence from Great Britain on July 2; however, the revision process was not finished until two days later. The original event was based on the annual king’s birthday celebration, which included bell ringing, bonfires, solemn processions, and oratory.
Such celebrations had long been an important part of Anglo-American politics. The decision of which historical anniversaries were commemorated and which were grieved had obvious political implications, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, when dynastic and religious disputes plagued the British Empire (and most of the rest of Europe).
When the toasts spoken at taverns and banquets started to be reprinted in newspapers in the middle of the 18th century, the practice of toasting the monarch and other patriot heroes—or of denouncing them—became an informal type of political discourse.
Patriots utilized such festivals during the early stages of the revolutionary movement in the colonies in the 1760s and early ’70s to declare their opposition to Parliament’s legislation while praising King George III as the true champion of English freedoms.
However, in many places during the summer of 1776, the commemoration of the nation’s first days of independence took the form of a fake burial for the king, whose “death” represented the end of monarchy and tyranny and the rebirth of liberty.
Independence Day was observed in the early years of the republic with parades, speeches, and toasting in celebrations of the existence of the new country. These rituals were equally significant in the development of the federal political system.
As informal political parties grew in popularity, they gave leaders and supporters a platform to link local and national elections to independence and pressing polity issues. In most bigger towns by the middle of the 1790s, the two emerging political parties had separate partisan Independence Day celebrations.
Perhaps because of this, Independence Day served as the template for several (sometimes brief-lived) holidays that occasionally had more overtly political overtones, like George Washington’s birthday and the anniversary of his inauguration while president Thomas Jefferson (1801–09).
Independence Day in the 19th century was marked by a bombastic stream of words that made it both a solemn event and one that could occasionally be made fun of, much like the era’s more popular and democratic political system.
The Fourth of July celebration evolved into a patriotic tradition that many groups—not just political parties—sought to claim with the expansion and variety of American society.
The day and its commemoration were appropriated by abolitionists, proponents of women’s rights, the temperance movement, and opponents of immigration (nativists), who frequently stated that they could not rejoice with the community as a whole while an un-American perversion of their rights existed.
The Fourth of July has grown in importance as a major midsummer holiday with the rise of leisure. Reformers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries launched the Safe and Sane Fourth of July movement in response to the prevalence of heavy drinking and the numerous accidents brought on by lighting off fireworks.
Independence Day lost significance as a platform for politics during the latter 20th century, even if it continued to be a national holiday highlighted by parades, patriotic music festivals, and fireworks displays.
It is still a compelling representation of the strength of the country and of what is uniquely American, including the freedom to stay in and cook a barbecue.
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