How do you celebrate Independence Day in your country?

[jack]

I saw this as a "writer's block" blogging prompt on Livejournal. At first I was shocked: wasn't that just rampant American-centrism? And then I thought, was that just my own English-centrism?

England has never really become independent of anywhere, except perhaps the Roman Empire, but I don't think that has a good story and authoritative date attached (?)

But is it reasonable to assume that most countries have (at least one) independence day? And that its named and commemorated in a similar manner to America? Wikipedia has quite a comprehensive list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_independence_days) which covers surprisingly many countries (with some number of notable exceptions, UK, Russia, China, Australia[1]...)

[1] Which may yet get there one day :)

Comments

[rmc28]

An awful lot of those independence days are independence from the UK. Perhaps we need lots of "That Bit Less Imperialist" parties each year.

[jack]

I think some people celebrate a tongue-in-cheek "good riddance" day; I can't quite imagine a world where we celebrate every time we got less colonial, we'd barely have time for anything else :)