If you look at your calendar you will quickly notice one thing. Namely, it is nearly the 4th of July which, here in the United States, means it is a holiday. Of course, if you get technical with it, the 4th of July was not really the date that the country became free, there was an entire war and then a government to form and a Constitution to write, but it is the date upon which the United States told the British they were an independent country. For the States, that’s close enough and, thus, worthy of celebration.

It is a curious holiday. I can understand the desire to want to celebrate the liberation of a country. Of course, when you compare the liberation of the United States from Great Britain to other countries who have shuffled off serious oppression, the States often seem like a bunch of whiners. I mean, we are taxed much higher now than any of the colonists ever were by the government then helped implement. But hey! Technically speaking we are represented now and so the whole “taxation without representation” thing is resolved, I guess.

You need look no further than our neighbor to the north to see how things could have gone differently. Yes, if you want to get down to the brass tacks, Canada is still part of the British Empire. It is a commonwealth of the monarchy. But seriously, Canada is its own country, capable of makings its own laws and levying its own taxes and raising and keeping its own army. So, other than on paper, it is its own country. They managed to do this without shooting each other or dressing up like Indians and dumping tea into a harbor.

Now, I am not here to disparage the United States. I was born and raised here and I love this country, I am just not one of those people who thinks that the United States is the end-all, be-all of countries. We are far from perfect and we often do things that are very ill-advised to say the least. I am not even thinking of any particular military action or anything here, just saying that in general the Untied States, when I last checked, was run by humans and humans do silly things so it all stands to reason.

I have never understood why people want to blow things up for the holiday. I am guessing this started happening when the war with Britain ended. Why would you celebrate the end of war, something that has to be the loudest and most deafening thing in the universe, by blowing up more things. Sure, firecrackers and such are not quite the same as cannonballs and mortars, but I bet your average soldier, just off the front lines, can’t really tell the difference.

So, the concept is, hey, we just won this war! The war is over! The guns are silenced! Now, let’s have a parade and make the people who just spent years hearing things blow up and watching people blow up march in a parade while we blow things up around them! It just seems like a strange tradition. I bet most soldiers wish that the way we had chosen to celebrate the liberation of the country was with quiet naps and rest.

The people who were in charge of our country when they decided to separate from Great Britain were, indeed, great men. They were, however, men. We often try to create deities out of mere mortals and I think that is wrong. It is the fact that they were men, with many flaws, and overcame that to become great that makes them great. They were rich men and many of them were womanizers and some of them were terrible fathers. I am sure they had plenty of doubts and fears and worried at great length if they had made the right decision. By signing their names, they really were committing an act of treason and faced serious penalties, including death, for having done so.

Still, I wonder what they would think of our country now. Would they recognize it? It is certainly much bigger than they probably could have imagined. It is noisier and busier than they could probably have conceived. I wonder what they would have thought about the “adjustments” made to the Constitution in this day and age. What would they think of the current administration and government?

The United States, for the most part, is filled with good people who are just trying to live their lives the best they can and do what they can to leave the world a little better than they found it. There are bad people here, but there are bad people everywhere. We tend to get arrogant and silly and forget that the rest of the world doesn’t think like we do or assume that they just should. Still, I wouldn’t want to have been raised anywhere else and can’t imagine living anywhere else.

So, I will be there, watching the things blow up and oohing and aahing with the rest of the crowd. I will be thankful for the people who have given their lives so that I don’t have to and can enjoy being a writer free to express my opinions in this country. This is a right I do not take lightly and wish I could thank every soldier who has ever died in every war so that I can do just that. I say celebrate and enjoy the time with your family.

Just remember, the holiday is not about blowing things up. It is not about getting the most fireworks or who has the loudest thing that goes boom. It is not about the sales at the stores or just getting a day off from work. It’s about celebrating a country that had an idea of freedom and found a way to try and put that idea into action. That idea is still there, and we need to try and remember that.

Bryan Alaspa is a featured writer for Xomba.com. Read the rest of his work here .