WHEN I FOUND OUT that this year the fourth of july was on a thursday, i had no idea that it would become a four day weekend holiday, for for millions of americans, it became exactly that, as the country decided to extend the concept of the three day holiday.
More power to the american people, i say! What an absolutely fantastic choice. Independence Day in the united states is a tremendously important holiday, and should be given a multi day celebration. Strange, to celebrate as a great holiday the day that a group of people signed their names to a letter to the king; for indeed, that's all that happened that day; more was to come, later, of course.
in europe the average worker gets something like six weeks of paid vacation time a year, and has a thirty five to thirty seven hour work week. Thus we can see that the united states lags a bit behind other industrialized countries in working conditions for workers.
Independence Day was more than the mere signing of the declaration of independence, of course. it was everything that led up to the meeting which wrote, agreed on, and signed the declaration, which was quite a bit.
And, also, of course, it was everything that happened afterward, as a result of the declaration, and its reception by the english government. Namely, they decided to oppose it, by whatever means necessary. That resulted in a bloody war.
In retrospect, it would have been much easier for everyone concerned if the english government had decided to merely accept the declaration of independence without opposition, and welcome the newly independent nation into the famly of nations. Fat chance of that.
Humans are by nature not always far seeing and magnanimous and logical. You would think that somebody in england would have pointed out that american independence, at some point or other, was inevitable.
The sudden advent of the multiple day independence day celebration is our newest declaration of independence.
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