and a belated Happy Canada Day to our Canadian friends as well.
It’s called “Independence Day”.
We don’t call yell “Merry 25th of December” on Christmas…
–Barnee, not a personal slant against you, just in general.
I just never understood why the Holiday is so mislabeled.
@axis_roll said in Happy 4th of July America:
It’s called “Independence Day”.
We don’t call yell “Merry 25th of December” on Christmas…
–Barnee, not a personal slant against you, just in general.
I just never understood why the Holiday is so mislabeled.
But we do say, “Happy Fourth of July”, so I don’t see why he should get chided for it. It’s not like he was saying, “Happy Eleventh of November” on Veterans / Armistice Day…
-Midnight_Reaper
As a trivia note, Roland Emmerich’s 1996 alien-invasion blockbuster was officially titled Independence Day but is also known (and I think was marketed) as ID4, so there’s an element of the 4th of July designation in the marketing tagline.
In an odd coincidence, by the way: on the July 1st long weekend for Canada Day, I was watching an old British movie on DVD which happened to contain an unexpected (and slightly humourous) reference to the American Revolution. The film was the 1959 murder mystery Jack the Ripper, and there’s a scene where Inspector O’Neill from Scotland Yard, accompanied by a U.S. police detective (Mr. Lowry, a long-time friend of O’Neill), is speaking with Dr. Tranter, one of the many suspects in the case. Tranter is a stiff and pompous aristocrat, and when he hears Lowry’s accent he asks O’Neill if Scotland Yard has started recruiting “colonials.” O’Neill politely answers that Mr. Lowry is an American. “I fail to see the difference,” says Tranter frostily. Lowry, unruffled, cheerfully points out that, “We had a war a while back, remember?” “A revolution, Mr. Lowry, not a war,” retorts Tranter. As a kind of joke-within-a-joke, the actor playing Lowry wasn’t actually an American but rather an expatriate Canadian actor living in Britain, so he was marginally closer to being a “colonial”, even though the movie is set in 1888, more than a decade after the BNA Act moved Canada in the direction of autonomy (though not all the way).
@Midnight_Reaper said in Happy 4th of July America:
@axis_roll said in Happy 4th of July America:
It’s called “Independence Day”.
We don’t call yell “Merry 25th of December” on Christmas…
–Barnee, not a personal slant against you, just in general.
I just never understood why the Holiday is so mislabeled.But we do say, “Happy Fourth of July”, so I don’t see why he should get chided for it.
I said it wasn’t a personal slant.
It’s not like he was saying, “Happy Eleventh of November” on Veterans / Armistice Day…
What? Your analogy makes no sense. NOBODY says that.
My point was that the holiday “Independence Day” is, for some unknown reason, better know as the “4th of July”. To me, this denigrates the whole purpose for the celebration.
The destruction of the WTC and other attacks are known as “9/11”. Its not an official holiday and no one calls pearl harbor “12/7” day because its not catchy or resonant. If we call it independence day, that’s an american-dependent reference; people from other countries are not likely to know (or care) when our independence was declared or why that particular day was chosen to commemorate a 7 year long war or a 30+ year struggle, and are likely to have their own “Independence Day”, in some countries it might ironically mark independence from the rule of the US (like Phil).
It’s like Canada Day. I have no idea why July 1 is marked that way on my desk calendar, it just is. Canada never fought a war of independence and it was peacefully and gradually partitioned off from its parent nation and so unless I open the wikipedia article I have abs. no idea (nor do I care) why or what that is or how its celebrated.
Take Boxing Day. To an american, its WTH is that? But to a UK resident, they’re like–that’s when you open presents. And we say, you mean Christmas? And they say, well no–we don’t open presents Christmas morning thats a custom thats not universal. It might be better called “unboxing day” but there was a point not so long ago when regular people were too poor to afford to give gifts at regular intervals and so such a holiday might have been exceptional in the past but a common and universal event today. The timing of that “feast” or exchange is…entirely customary.
Or Guy Fawkes Day. They set off fireworks–that must be when the UK became independent? How does that relate to a catholic plot to blow up Parliament? Because…well…fireworks? Or perhaps we just liked your July 4th celebration idea and its alot like chinese new year but the chinese are able to provide fireworks all year round–can we just arbitrarily choose a certain holiday then decide how to celebrate it at some other point?
Well, yes.
Same halloween. In the UK they didn’t have a dress-up holiday, but they liked that idea when they saw it in the US and so now they do.
Because these are all cultural customs and without culture-specific knowledge, they’re all meaningless.
