This July, huge celebrations will take place for America’s 250th anniversary – its semiquincentennial, if you want to learn a word no one can pronounce. There will be fireworks in Washington D.C., a tall ship parade in New York City’s harbor, special events, concerts, ceremonies, historic reenactments, and crowds of visitors from all over the country.
Most of us probably won’t be able to attend any of them. I, and maybe you too, would love to go, but we will be right where we usually are – in small towns, suburbs, and ordinary communities far from the major celebrations.
But that is okay. Because for 250 years, America has never existed only in the most important and famous places. Men and women from every place have contributed ideas, inventions, creativity, art, work, and even their lives when called for.
It has existed in church fellowship halls and family farms, in factories and small businesses, in county fairs and Little League games. It has existed in neighborhood cookouts, school gymnasiums, memorial services in old cemeteries, and in communities where people work hard and still help a neighbor in need.
The large celebrations will be exciting, and I am glad they are happening. Important milestones should be marked. Two hundred fifty years is significant.
But I think some of the best appreciation for our country will happen far away from the television cameras.
It will happen in places where people gather for small-town parades and sit in folding chairs waiting for the fire engines and the marching bands to come by. It will happen in conversations between grandparents and grandchildren. It will happen when someone takes the time to explain why there are so many little flags in front of gravestones or why certain songs are played every Fourth of July.
It will happen when people pause long enough to realize – and appreciate – that freedom is not normal in the history of the world.
Americans have always argued with each other, and we certainly still do. But despite our disagreements, we still quietly enjoy blessings people in many countries have never even experienced – the freedom to worship openly, speak freely, gather together, vote, own property, raise families, and pursue ordinary peaceful lives.
Those things become easy to overlook because they are so familiar to us. We don’t know what it is like to not have them.
That is one reason why national anniversaries like America’s 250th celebration are important. They remind us to stop long enough to notice what we have been given. Fighting the world’s superpower was the riskiest thing Americans have ever done. And we all owe our freedom and safety to those original risk takers, many of whom gave so much.
But you do not have to travel to New York or Washington D.C. to appreciate America’s 250th anniversary.
You can attend a local America 250 parade or community celebration. Visit a historical marker you usually drive past. Put out a flag. Walk through an old cemetery. Take your children or grandchildren to a community event or celebration. Learn something about your own town’s history. Treat this holiday as something special no matter where you are.
Because much of America’s story was built in ordinary places by ordinary Americans who simply lived, worked, sacrificed, raised families, served others, and tried to leave things better for others.
And that is still worth honoring today.
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