"No Problem the World Faces Has an Answer That Can Be Found in America"

"It is clear that we have to start looking for answers to the world's problems elsewhere, in ourselves and in others. There is a celebration of independence this Independence Day and it is real; it's just for countries other than America. The lesson the Americans once taught the British, they are teaching the rest of the world: there are no necessary nations. There are no exceptional countries. There are no permanent global orders. There's just more history, and trying to survive to stay yourself it."

Stephen Marche at The Guardian says that "[t]his Independence Day, the world is declaring its independence from the US."

"A Rare Example of Cooperation"

"By 1620, Wampanoag weakness had provided an opportunity for a rival group to the west, the Narragansett, who had largely escaped the impact of the disease. When the Plymouth settlers arrived, Ousamequin was struggling to prevent the Narragansett from subjugating the remaining Wampanoags and forcing them to pay tribute. While he initially kept his distance from the Mayflower's inhabitants, fearing further aggression—and disease—Ousamequin evidently came to the conclusion that an alliance with the new English arrivals in the region could help protect his people."

Sarah Pruitt at "History Stories" discusses the backstory of the 1621 Thanksgiving.

"There Remains a Hint of Sourness to It All"

"The process of mainstreaming a once renegade and often neglected holiday was bound to be sporadic and riddled with contradictions. It hasn't been lost on observers that Congress passed a Juneteenth bill without much trouble, but hasn't done anything meaningful to curb police power, which is what most of last year's demonstrators were actually asking for, let alone tried to pass ambitious legislation, like reparations, to address historical injustices. Gordon Granger couldn't have known, on his deathbed in Santa Fe, the debt that embattled 21st-century PR departments and politicians would owe him after he was gone. But he probably wouldn't be surprised that they, too, would be offering a degraded substitute for what people really needed."

Zak Cheney-Rice at New York describes "America's Hollow Embrace of Juneteenth."

"The Triumph of Pottersville"

"George had been living in Pottersville all along. He just didn't know it. Because he was seeing the world through his eyes--not as it was, but as he was: honest and fair. But on 'The Night Journey,' George is nothing and nobody. When the angel took him out of his life, he took him out of his consciousness, out from behind his eyes. It was only then that he saw America. Bedford Falls was the fantasy. Pottersville is where we live. If you don't believe me, examine the dystopia of the Capra movie--the nighttime world of neon bars and drunks and showgirl floozies. Does Bedford Falls feel more like the place you live, or does Pottersville? I live in a place that looks very much like Bedford Falls, but after 10 minutes in line at the bank or in the locker room where the squirts are changing for hockey I know I'm in Pottersville." 

In a 2010 Salon article, Rich Cohen calls It's a Wonderful Life the "most terrifying Hollywood film ever made."

"Too-La-Loo"

"A little over a decade later, however, African Americans like Douglass began making the glorious anniversary their own. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the nation's four million newly emancipated citizens transformed Independence Day into a celebration of black freedom. The Fourth became an almost exclusively African American holiday in the states of the former Confederacy—until white Southerners, after violently reasserting their dominance of the region, snuffed these black commemorations out."

In a 2018 Atlantic article, Ethan J. Kytle and Brian write about "When the Fourth of July Was a Black Holiday."

"We Should Probably Remember Jamestown at Least Once a Year"

"The story of Jamestown portrays the United States as a runaway business venture fueled by the greed of capitalists, the desperation of the poor, and the misery of slaves. Jamestown shows that the United States, from its very inception, has treated natural and human resources as equally inexhaustible, and equally expendable. It shows the arrogance of distant elites whose knowledge of their own incompetence is rendered painless by their indifference to human consequences. It's obvious from the historical record that many of the ordinary people involved in this enterprise did not like where it was going, but did not know how to stop it."

Brianna Rennix at Current Affairs argues that Americans should focus on 1607 more than 1620.

The Invention of Christmas

"Christmas gift-giving, then, is the product of overlapping interests between elites who wanted to move raucous celebrations out of the streets and into homes, and families who simultaneously wanted to keep their children safe at home and expose them, in limited amounts, to commercial entertainment. Retailers certainly supported and benefited from this implicit alliance, but not until the turn of the 20th century did they assume a proactive role of marketing directly to children in the hopes that they might entice (or annoy) their parents into spending more money on what was already a well-established practice of Christmas gift-giving."

Paul Ringle in a 2015 Atlantic article discusses how modern celebrations of Christmas developed in nineteenth-century New York.

"Area Man Remembers Less Politically Correct Time When Christmas Was About Honoring The Glory Of Saturn"

"At press time, Rocha was lamenting the fact that the holiday cups at Starbucks had not a single traditional image of Saturn devouring his own newborn children."

From The Onion.

"So This Year, Don’t Worry About That New Flatscreen TV"

"But it's desperately important to remember what makes Thanksgiving so special: it's not about giving gifts, or receiving them. It's about a meal, about family, and about celebrating the gifts we've already been given. It's about exercising gratitude and grace, regardless of the money in our accounts or the gadgetry in our homes. That sort of thankfulness and mindfulness deserves more than one meal, or one day."

Gracy Olmstead at The American Conservative criticizes Black Friday.

Dead on the Fourth of July

"The importance of July 4 might have surprised some Founding Fathers. The Continental Congress declared freedom from Britain on July 2 and approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4. Most members signed the document in August.
"Adams thought Americans would remember July 2 as their 'Day of Deliverance' from Britain. In a letter to his wife, Abigail, he wrote, 'It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

Melissa Etehad in the Los Angeles Times discusses the deaths of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe.

"A Holiday for City Planners"

"The idea is simple: Kids, and the parents who chaperone them, have a way of sussing out good urban design. On Halloween, they'll flock to places where cars drive slowly, streets are well-lit, houses are close together, and front doors are close to the street. If there's a holiday for city planners, the planner Brent Toderian has argued, Halloween is it."

Henry Grabar at Slate discusses the "trick-or-treat test" for walkable neighborhoods.

"American Slavery Could No Longer Be Hidden From the Rest of the World"

"This was a rhetorical device, however, used to set up the glaring contrast between what the founders did for themselves and the condition of black people at that time. In 1776, he noted, many people viewed George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the others as dangerous subversives and insurgent upstarts despite British tyranny.
"However, with the hindsight of 1852, he said, it was no longer problematic to see 'that America was right, and England wrong.'
"Likewise, Douglass noted, in 1852, abolitionism was considered a dangerous and subversive political proposition. The implication here was that future generations would consider his anti-slavery stance patriotic, just, reasonable—and necessary."

Herbert Dyer, Jr., in Counterpunch discusses Frederick Douglass's "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro."

Christopher Wilson in Smithsonian investigates "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the life of Francis Scott Key.

And Robert G. Parkinson in The New York Times looks at slavery, Native Americans, and the Declaration of Independence.

James Livingston reponds to Parkinson at Politics and Letters.

"Drunken, Costumed Debauchery May Be a Truer Celebration of Christmas Than Peaceful Family Gatherings"

"In Moore's telling, the social inversion long associated with the holidays remained, but instead of the rich providing gifts to poor, adults now gave gifts to kids. This helped solidify a new way to celebrate Christmas: neither a noisy party on the street nor a dignified visit to friends but rather a family holiday, overseen by the good-natured spirit of Santa Claus. The transformation did not happen overnight, but once introduced, this new version of Christmas spread fast. Merchants eagerly promoted it, seeing the obvious profit to be made in this peaceful, present-filled approach. The domestic celebration became the 'real Christmas' in newspaper reports, while the drunken street carousing was soon rebranded as 'crime.'"

Alex Palmer in Slate connects SantaCon to traditional Christmas observances.

"Has There Ever Been Another Independence Day Speech to Match It?"

"In the end, the promise of the Declaration could not be delivered without force of arms. The contradictions between freedom and slavery were etched so deeply into the nation that no orator's tongue could resolve them. Still, Douglass called down the storm, whirlwind, and earthquake in the attempt, and his oration deserves a place of honor in the American canon. It would please the wrathful prince to receive the recognition that is his due; though he would surely be careful to accept it only through faintly pursed lips. And then, with that tight smile, he might wonder if we too would be rash enough to ask him to speak on our Fourth."


James West Davidson in Slate analyzes Frederick Douglass's speech from July 5, 1852.

"So Let's Name April 9 New Birth of Freedom Day"

"Today, the South is home to innumerable counties, schools, and other monuments named in honor of Confederate men, or established to celebrate the Confederacy itself. The federal government can't change that on its own, but it can refuse to participate in the celebration. It could rename these 10 army installations after Union fighters. It could remove monuments to the Confederacy (as opposed to museums and landmarks) from the National Register of Historic Places, and disclaim any obligation to finance their maintenance. It could stop producing headstones for Confederate graves—as Steven I. Weiss documented in The Atlantic, the feds process nearly 2,000 of these a year, at a cost of half a million dollars, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for maintaining more Confederate graves and monuments than Union ones. It could remove the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and place it in the custody of the Smithsonian—or at least end the spectacle of the president of the United States bestowing it with a wreath every Memorial Day. We aren't being polite to anyone worthy of politeness, or advancing any noble end, by continuing to honor traitors in this way."


Brian Beutler in The New Republic calls for making the anniversary of Confederate surrender a national holiday.

The Chocolate War

"What they sell in England can't be sold in the United States and be called milk chocolate, because they add fats other than cocoa butter. They're using palm and shea oils. We're only using cocoa butter."


Paul Solman on the PBS Newshour reports on the battle between "Cadbury U.S. vs. Cadbury U.K."

"Happy Robert E. Lee Day!"

"All of this raises an obvious question: How did Lee get tangled up in our national commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement? The best answer is convenience. In states that commemorated Lee, lawmakers who approved of MLK Day didn’t want to create two holidays in January. Instead, they combined the two days. As a concept, it was a poor pairing. As a bureaucratic solution, it worked."


Jamelle Bouie in Slate looks at the peculiar institution of Robert E. Lee Day.

Happy Constitution Day?

"But before you knock Constitution Day for being a drop in the bucket of the ocean of confusion around government, civics, and the law, recognize that a probably unconstitutional holiday inspired by a PR man to peddle a song, promoted by a newspaper magnate with a blockbuster movie, and then tucked into a massive omnibus bill by a determined senator from West Virginia who carried a copy of the Constitution in his pocket every day of his public life, might just be the most American holiday of all."


Dahlia Lithwick in Slate explains this week's special day.

"It Deserves Wider Reach"

"These celebrations would continue throughout the 19^th century—growing in size and prominence—until the advent of Jim Crow and the aggressive repression of the early 20th century, when blacks were fully disenfranchised and outside the protection of law, vulnerable to the depredations of terrorists and lynch mobs. Put another way, it’s difficult to celebrate freedom when your life is defined by oppression on all sides. Still, the holiday remained in the civic life of black Texans, and began to expand beyond the state with the Great Migration of blacks from the South. As Isabelle Wilkerson writes in The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, 'The people from Texas took Juneteenth Day to Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and other places they went.'"


Jamelle Bouie in Slate marks Juneteenth.

Put the X in Xmas

"Xmas is, though, a much more venerable abbreviation than many suppose. The X signifies the Greek letter chi, which was traditionally combined with P, or rho, to signify the name of Christ. Constantine instructed his soldiers to scrawl the letters on their shields before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, his victory in which led to the unlikely establishment of a Christian empire. Far from a symbol of secularization, then, Xmas carries echoes of the clash of battle that inaugurated political Christendom.
"The abbreviation’s use in English dates back to 1021, when an Anglo-Saxon scribe saved himself space by writing XPmas. The P was dropped but the term soldiered on: Coleridge used Xmas in his letter writing. The wags at Punch pressed it into service as a verb, Xmassing (one imagines the verb would get more use if the WASPs who currently spend their time summering, wintering, and weekending were somewhat more observant)."

Matthew Schmitz at First Things explains Xmas.