July 4th is a generally more festive American holiday — with cookouts, parades, parties and fireworks — than other patriotic holidays, such as Memorial Day or Veterans Day.
Most people forget that when the Declaration of Independence was drafted and signed on or about July 4th 1776, it was both a revolutionary and a somber occasion. It was revolutionary in being the first political doctrine in human history to assert that the rights of the people come from God, and not the state—which made those rights natural, absolute and “unalienable.”