Why I Cry On The 4th of July

I’m not sure if I will be able to complete this post because it’s such an emotional day for me. In fact, I’m going to try to keep this as short as possible.

Nearly everyone looks forward to the Fourth of July. Well, everyone in America that is. The holiday is one of the most anticipated celebrations of the year, and there are those who plan well in advance. Flights are booked, hotels reserved, and for those who stay home – it’s cookouts galore! The night is capped with masterful displays of fireworks in almost every metropolis throughout the nation. For the life of me I can never understand what all the hoopla is about. Why is everyone so jubilant?

Celebrate? No, no…not I! I do not partake in the merriment of Independence Day. A different emotion is triggered inside of my chest cavity. The pang that strikes me is indescribable.

The way I see it, the Fourth of July has a different meaning. It’s the word Independence that gets me teary-eyed. My how foolish are the youth, for they know not the ways of the world. I wake up on the fourth day of the seventh month, and I can’t help but shake my head. A sense of loneliness washes over me, and I wipe away the tears.

Why are we not home? What were they thinking? (No, it’s not what you’re thinking. The reason I cry on Independence Day is not because I have a former girlfriend, who was my fourth, named Julie. That’s just silly.)

There hasn’t been an Independence Day in which I fail to remember Chapter 15 in the book of Luke in the New Testament. You know what I’m talking about – The Parable of the Lost Son, more commonly referred to as the Prodigal Son. Young America was given all of the support that it’s little heart desired. Then all of a sudden, in 1776, America decided that it was grown. No longer did the new country want to be under the watchful eye of wise-old Great Britain.

America knew all that was needed to know and was ready to venture out on it’s own. Big mistake! Here we are, a measly 235 years removed, and America is lost. Oil is almost four dollars a gallon. The National Debt is reaching the stratosphere, the USD is only worth 60 pence, and there is no hope in sight. Independence turned out to be a sour-sugarless lemonade, not the sweet-godly ambrosia that the forefather’s thought it would be. If only we could go back and do it all over again.

Nowhere to turn now but home. With tears in our collective eyes, Americans should suck up our pride, swim across “The Pond,” and crawl on our knees – begging Her Majesty to take us back. Will she welcome us with the open arms of the father in the Biblical parable? She need not. We don’t desire a warm homecoming, we just want to rest under her plentiful bosom once more. Lucky is the generation who has a President wise enough to be the Prodigal Son. Hopeful was I, when Obama spoke of CHANGE. Oh to be a Briton again. I desperately weep to return…accent and all!

But why would you want to go back home, you ask? There is no Fourth of July in England, you say? Yes, my good man! Indeed there is, I respond…it’s between the 3^rd and the 5^th of July.

@PeteTeix617