We thought you might enjoy learning some little known facts about this most American of holidays that we just marked by parades, fireworks and backyard barbecues across our great country.Folktales says that George Washington interpreted the flag’s colors in this way: the stars were taken from the sky, the red from the British colors, and the white stripes signified the secession from the home country.
Numerical symbolism was an important component of many of our early Fourth of July celebrations. Numbers were used to represent the thirteen colonies, the number of states in the union, seventy-six for 1776, and so on. Numbers were depicted through toasts drunk at dinners, artillery blasts, allegorial depictions in parades, and a myriad of other ways.
The tradition can be traced back to Philadelphia in 1777 when a number of ships in the harbor discharged 13 cannons honoring " the 13 United States." That evening "a grand exhibition of fireworks . . . began and concluded with thirteen rockets on the commons." (Virginia Gazette, 18 July 1777)
Everyone is familiar with the phrase "stars and stripes," a metaphor for the American flag, etched in our minds in recent times in large part to John Philip's Sousa's march, "Stars and Stripes Forever," played at numerous Fourth of July celebrations each year. When referring to the American flag in the nineteenth century, however, both phrases "Stars and Stripes" and "Stripes and Stars" were in common usage.
There is an interesting story about Sam Adams-a 20 year campaigner for independence and signer of the Declaration of Independence. In Philadelphia on July 8, 1776 there was the first public reading of the Declaration. The town was filled with joyous celebrations. . “Bonfires were burning, church bells were ringing, and people were cheering all over town.”
"Sam Adams walked back to his boarding house and took up a bundle of letters he had received from friends and patriots down through the years. These were letters which might hang those friends now, if they ever fell into the hands of the British."
"Sam Adams spent a long time with a pair of scissors, snipping those letters into tiny bits. He opened his second-story window, so that he could look down on the chaos in the street below, and quite thoughtfully and quietly, he let those little bits of paper fly by the handsful & fluttered down on the celebration--confetti for a new nation.”
For some of us, maybe we don't need fireworks. Maybe some small private act of celebration is enough. (From "Festival for the Fourth," a Bicentennial Sunday, July 4, 1976. With Douglas Edwards)
