Have a Happy 4th!!!
Friday, July 4th, 2008
Today I’m celebrating independence from the monarchy and tyranny of the non-scurvy ridden British. Without having grown up here I don’t know if its just a recent thing but people seem to not want to call holidays by their ‘official’ name. For example, Merry Christmas is now Happy Holidays and Independence Day, while ‘also known as’ 4th of July is now generally shortened to “Have a Happy 4th”. I wonder if this is trying to break away from the orignal meaning of the celebration as with changing Christmas to the secular Holidays. So maybe its peoples trying to make me feel more welcome, or perhaps its more laziness – moving speech more towards the brevity of emails and text messages.
We celebrated the Queen’s Birthday today at work with a big sponge cake. I seem to be celebrating Britishness more outside of the country than when I was in it (with the exception of football tournaments, though I doubt that is getting much celebration this time around). This one was celebrated because the president of the company is an Australian and out there they get a day off work, while a few of my colleagues pointed out to me back in April (I still had to look it up again to make sure of the date!) when it was St George’s Day. There was no celebration for it but I think while working in England it was always a day that passed without notice until a couple of weeks later when someone would raise their head from their monitor and say ‘Oh, it was St George’s the other day!’
