Thread: Happy Birthday United States of America!

Originally Posted by Brewskier

It's going to be harder to celebrate this year. After these last two weeks, especially, we can see just how far we've drifted from our purpose.

Originally Posted by arjay

You are right, it does seem harder to celebrate this year. The governmental cloud is getting more intense over this great country...no end in sight.

Nevertheless, this is still the greatest democracy in the world. This country isn't represented by its government. The people represent the values and strengths that make this country the powerhouse that it has become.

Originally Posted by Brewskier

It's going to be harder to celebrate this year. After these last two weeks, especially, we can see just how far we've drifted from our purpose.

I was going to write something like this, but then I remembered that we have a representative republic, and anything can be changed, if needed.

As a side note, this date is also the one year anniversary of my wife and I being debt free. I am, well and truly, a home owner.

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Birthday USA!!!!!

(By the way, when is Britain's birthday?)

Originally Posted by spt5

Happy Birthday USA!!!!!

(By the way, when is Britain's birthday?)

i think they just use the Queen's?

Originally Posted by spt5

(By the way, when is Britain's birthday?)

There isn't one. The UK does not have a '4th of July' kind of thing at all. The UK and it's various constituent nations were 'born' out of thousands of years of population and culture movements and changes, wars, invasions, noble marriages, etc., etc., rather than in one specific act. The closest things to it are the Saint's Days, which are considered as 'national days' for the individual constituent nations which make up the UK, and celebrated as such to varying extents:

Wales - St. David's Day, March 1st (not a public holiday, despite repeated attempts to make it one by Welsh MPs and AMs, which have been blocked by the English, but very widely celebrated in Wales)
Northern Ireland - St. Patrick's Day, March 17th (a public holiday in NI)
England - St. George's Day, 23rd April (not a holiday, and doesn't seem to be celebrated particularly by many people for some reason)
Scotland - St. Andrew's Day, 30th November (public holiday in Scotland)

There are also other saints' days celebrated in various parts as local cultural events - St. Piran's Day (March 5th), for example, is treated as a kind of 'national day' in Cornwall (many in Cornwall (and some outside, of course) see it as a 'nation' in its own right).

There have been suggestions of having some kind of 'Britain Day' holiday, but most people seemed to think it was a pointless and stupid idea anyway, and many outside England objected to it as being yet another piece of attempted cultural assimulation from England (they have a long history of such things, so it's a bit of a touchy subject for many in the rest of the UK). The idea is a contentious and contraversial one. Personally I suspect it will never happen, and those in favour of it seem thankfully to have gone quiet on it over the last couple of years.

The Queen's official birthday is apparently used for the purpose for UK diplomatic missions abroad, and there is an 'honours list' issued on that day, but outside the immediate celebreations involving the monarch in London, nobody else celebrates it at all or considers it as an important day or a 'national' day or anything like that. It's not something most people even really know is happening, apart from seeing details of the honours list on the news.

Despite the political 'union' (which may or may not survive anyway!), it's a big mistake to think of the UK or 'Britain' as actually being one 'nation', and the fact that it isn't largely explains why there isn't a 'national day' for it!