The celebration of America’s 250th birthday hits differently for many people who live in Anaheim, near the Disneyland Resort. A huge fireworks celebration for a milestone birthday? That’s not a once-every-50-years, or even an annual, celebration. That’s every weekend.
Having a major theme park like Disney in your community means that big celebrations become part of your everyday life. That can make it difficult to appreciate something as special as America’s 250th birthday.
When I lived in Orlando near Walt Disney World, fireworks shows were a daily occurrence — not just for the weekends. My coworkers at Disney and I joked that normal people had a TV show, or maybe a drink, to look forward to at the end of their shift. But we got to go home to a sky-filling pyro show every night.
Fourth of July-style celebrations have become normal for people who work in or live near big theme parks. Does that make the Fourth of July less special for us? I don’t think so. Ultimately, any birthday or anniversary — whether it is America’s or some other loved one’s — is not about the celebration. It is a moment to honor a relationship.
That relationship might feel strained for many Americans at this moment. After all, America is not some singular institution. It’s a collection of more than 340 million people and all the institutions and systems that we have created over the years to manage our communities. It’s hard for a lot of people not to feel left out in a relationship that large and complex.
That is why storytellers are so important. Stories bring us together. They inspire readers, viewers and, yes, even theme park visitors with heroes who find ways to make our world better. At Disneyland, Universal Studios and in countless theme park attractions around the world, something goes terribly wrong but then a hero — maybe even you, the visitor – steps up and saves the day. That’s a message that we all need to hear to get by in life.
Americans could have chosen other dates to celebrate our nation’s birthday. We could have chosen June 21, the date of the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788. Or Oct. 19, the day the British Army surrendered to the Americans in Yorktown, Virginia in 1781. Or Sept. 3, the day the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, ending the Revolutionary War.
Instead, we chose to celebrate July 4, 1776 — the date on the Declaration of Independence. Why? The importance of that document goes beyond the independence that it declared. That document tells us that we all share the self-evident right to work together to determine our relationship with the nation that governs us.
We have the right to write our own story. We can, and must, save the day.
That is the relationship that we all will celebrate July 4. That is the relationship that we celebrate every day that any of us does something to help make our community better. Because only by honoring our relationship with those around us can we write our own “happily ever after.”