This is the first year I’ve noticed this (2024). Here in the Century of Insanity, I noticed today online that people in Canada and Australia (and probably elsewhere in the world ) were typing “Happy 4th of July!” WTF? I found this odd since Independence Day in the United States of North America — which is always on 4 July — is a holiday only in the US. I asked: Why are people in other countries typing “Happy 4th of July?” It has nothing to do with them.

The official name of the holiday is of course Independence Day. It means independence from the British Crown. So I found it most ironic/insane that people in Canada and Australia — both nations are under the British Crown and are Constitutional Monarchies — would be celebrating the US’s independence from the Crown and saying “Happy 4th of July.” Insanity. But I suspect they have no idea what they’re talking about and what this holiday is about. They just saw “Happy 4th of July” someplace online and decided to get in queue thinking it’s some special day. Somewhere.

Just as most holidays in the US have become meaningless, I suspect most people in the US don’t know what this holiday is about either. To them, it’s just a day off. And if this holiday were called Independence Day and not “the 4th of July” maybe things would be different. Maybe people would question “Independence” from what? But when a holiday is commercialised and merely given a calendar number (the 4th of July), that’s all it is anymore. A day for loud fireworks and junk food. As I heard on a network last night, “It’s about eating hot dogs.”

In San Francisco, the fireworks sounded like a war zone. Several locals were saying they had never heard it sound like this before. I hadn’t either. It went on nonstop for throughout the night, solidly. Solid rumbling and explosion sounds for hours. In past years, you’d hear the occasional bomb sound but no rumbling. This year was different; the fireworks had a violent sound to them. The last I heard, the Bay Area was/has been called “Billionaire Bay,” so I suspect it is the super wealthy responsible for San Francisco’s nonstop rumbling, war zone effect that, again, went on for hours. My friend said it was worse than a war zone. He compared it to a really bad thunderstorm with constant thunder and it went until about 4 AM with loud booms. I imagine The City got quite a few complaints about it.

So “Happy 4th of July” has become just like “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” — instead of Happy Holidays which includes them all and makes no judgments about what people celebrate, or don’t — and “Happy Easter.” And Christmas and Easter (especially) have become meaningless, except to the part-time Christians who only go to church on those two High Holy Days.

Some of us think that the US should have stayed under the British Crown and things would be better in the US if that were the case.