“Celebrate good times, come on!” — Kool and the Gang
We have just emerged from the celebration of a new federal holiday, and we are sliding into the home of an old holiday. “Juneteenth,” the new holiday, celebrates the date in 1865 that enslaved people in Texas were notified of the 1862 signing of the Proclamation of Emancipation by President Abraham Lincoln. Independence Day, or July 4th, celebrates the Colonies’ independence from British rule. And we are going to observe the second holiday in the way that John Adams described to his wife, Abigail, (“with) Pomp and Parade … Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one end of this Continent to the other.” And posts on a social media neighborhood site: “Gunfire or fireworks?”
“We’re gonna have a good time tonight, let’s celebrate, it’s all right.”
I suppose that the number of people who will be having “a good time tonight” merely as an opportunity to party will far outnumber the people who will be contemplative and reflect on the “rockets red glare” that illuminated the star-spangled banner. Barbecue and beer will blow away the bombs bursting in air. But Adams’ pomp and parade did not seem to be an invitation to review the travails that the new country had overcome, but an exhortation to celebrate today, tonight, tomorrow. Should you happen to remember Crispus Attucks, a Black man who is considered to have been the first to die in the Boston Massacre and therefore, the first casualty in the cause of American independence, that would be a bonus. Or remember, as Francis Scott Key wrote in 1814 after the Battle of Fort McHenry, that “No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave…” When we are wiping the barbecue sauce from our faces, perhaps we might also remember my pool-playing friend, the door gunner from the undeclared war in Vietnam, the man who can still identify a Huey overheard, a sound he remembers from when he rode in its open door and rained down misery onto the jungles below.
“It’s time to come together, it’s up to you, what’s your pleasure…”
Of course, we do not have to delve so deeply into our memories to find reasons to celebrate. Many people could have died on January 6th, 2021, though it is difficult to accurately ascertain who died as a direct result of the attack. In any case, we can have a small measure of comfort that, given the lethal firepower available to citizens throughout the country, no more damage was done. But we still have some good reasons to celebrate. Despite assurances to the contrary, a deadly virus did not disappear, and turned into a pandemic that killed more than one million humans in this country. Without a commitment to vaccination, more people would have died, and for that, we can be thankful, and celebrate.
“Everyone around the world, come on!”
There was a moment in a book I read when a man watches in horror as his son contemplates an imposing and dangerous jump over a chasm. (I believe the moment was in Christopher Dickey’s memoir of his father’s filming of the novel, “Deliverance.”) The father watches, terrified as the son studies the distance, then completes the terrifying jump. The son was so excited about having succeeded, that he danced in joy on the other edge of death. And perhaps our celebrations this coming week will have that same flavor, that relief that we have survived the leap over the chasm.
cjon3acd@att.net