My neighbors tend toward the overboard during the celebration of our nation's anniversary. The tendency for the pyromaniacally minded in southeast Nebraska is to drive to Missouri and purchase an abundance of discounted explosives that are expensively if at all available in Nebraska. These include weighty artillery shells and rockets on top of the usual sorts of roman candles and bottle rockets, Black Cats and M-80s, whizzing spinners and smoky or sparkly orbs. For those who make their pilgrimage to Missouri, the scale of their purchases and celebrations tend to overwhelm those who make local purchases, despite the discounts involved. Fireworks are only legal in Nebraska, or at least the Lincoln city limits, for the two days before the Fourth of July and as a result, booms and their echoes reverberate throughout the town from late morning or afternoon into the night; but on the Fourth, many continue to fire past midnight.
On the night of the Fourth, when I first planned on writing this, my mother and I hosted a get-together of friends and co-workers, favoring the pyrotechnic displays of our neighbors to those provided by the city. It must have peaked between 9:30 to 11:00, but it was hard to tell as different families traded the responsibility resulting from their cache of rockets and shells. My mother once told me that her priest condemned the use of fireworks because they simulate war and inspire ignorance to the trauma of combat. Biking past driveways scarred and littered, hearing the buzzes and whizzing and booms, I felt more in the presence of a tribal ritual, of a pagan fête than of patriotism. I felt the subtle yearning for an effigy or sacrifice, the wavelength of thought related to collective, focused aggression against some simulacrum of enemy or villain or demon.
Neither my mother nor I partake in the explosive festivities ourselves. Perhaps I think this excludes me somehow from the excitement from which others partake. Personally, the sharp blasts of light and chorus of bursts perturbs and aggravates me more than entertain. All the same, I pick out my favorite sort of firework—this year was the sort that would burst in white, then have a sudden bundle of secondary bursts in a dual conical shape, joined at the apex, that somewhat inspired a black hole—and partake in the playful criticism of my guests and mother; but it is difficult to attach myself to the events at hand.
The new-found tone of sacrifice remained for me, distancing me further from the exhibitions of the evening. Though we ate plentifully, conversed amicably, and played a little bit of my mother's board game “Smart Ass,” I mostly wanted to laugh at the lack of ceremonial climax. All of these families, neighbors and fellow Lincolnites across town (we can see them clearly and quite beautifully from our roof), participated in this disorganized orgy of systematized aggression but were denied the moment of collective satisfaction, communal identification in the destruction of an identifiable “other.” With the dissolution of a community action or moment, then the attempt to capitalize on the event vanishes, fading grumpily away with the sweeping of shrapnel and debris.
The Fourth of July seems to be the most explicitly pagan—or, perhaps savage—of recognized American holidays. It smacks of the violence and visual displays that can unify people in excitement and awe, while incorporating the popularized brand of religious patriotism, and originates in an organized event for the public led by a select group. Without any obvious moment of unification, particularly when one-upmanship is part of the neighborly partying, then it very well may divide as readily as it could bring together. I felt somewhat scared amidst my neighbors, most of whom are perfect strangers, with all their celebratory virtuosity and with it all over, I am happily relieved.
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