Saturday, July 03, 2004

On Celebrating My Independence
And a happy E Pluribus Unum Day to you, too!

Those summer days... those summer day memories of my childhood will forever bear the imprint of July 4th. Parades with flags galore and marching bands marching ... playing John Philip Sousa, the March King... "The Stars and Stripes Forever". (link goes to a page with a very good rendition for Real Player) Riding our Schwinn bicycles at the tail-end of the parade all decorated with crepe paper (the bikes, not us!), streamers in the handlebars, and playing cards clacking in the spokes.

The BIG family picnic at Aunt Ruth's farm with the lake. Sack races, balloon tosses, watermelon and spitting seeds. Marshmallows. Then at dusk the sparklers came out... the ones that could give you third degree burns if you weren't real careful. We could write our names in the air and see the letters in the lingering glow. We couldn't wait for it to get dark though, because then it was time for the real fireworks. We frisked about like ponies at the very thought of them. The fireworks!! I think fireworks were more special then because often the 4th was the only time we saw them in a whole year. Not like today, when every Tom, Dick and Mickey Mouse event has them. Fireworks, oooooh ... aerial bombs. Distant thunder. The younger kids covered their ears. But not us. The almost sweet smell of cordite was everywhere leaving a powerful olfactory etching in the mind to this day.

Those summer days... the good old days some call them, and I suppose some of it was very, very good. So much time has flown in-between then and today. Even my children now have their own memories of being a kid long ago on July 4th.

I suppose I've been gradually declaring my independence from many aspects of the American "Civil Religion" for ten years or more. I still love a Sousa march, but my childlike acceptance of the underpinnings of the high holy day, July 4th, went away somehow. I guess I simply no longer wished to nurture it. I admit I still mourn the loss a little. Obviously, eh? since when I imagined writing this piece, I had no clue that I could wax on so nostalgically. What a silly human being I am sometimes. ;-)

This year to celebrate my independence I'm reading as much as I can find on the nature of civil religions. Maybe you'll need some reading material tomorrow too. Here is a partial on-line list:

Manifest destiny adapted for 1990s' war discourse: mission and destiny intertwined

Rousseau, On the Social Contract (scroll to section 8 for his take on civil religion)

Divided We Fall, America's Two Civil Religions

With God on Our Side?: How American 'Civil Religion' permeates society and manifests itself in public life

Civil Religion in America (1967)