O.K. bud just throw out our dirty laundry for everyone to see. Complete with skid marks in our underware!!!! Yes, it is perfectly true and the actual story. . We are not taught about it in schools and you basically have to be a crazy history nerd like myself to be familar with it. There are more and more Americans that are beginning to understand more of our history that is simply not mythological. The whole everyone having a nice little dinner is a much nicer story though.

Its also much nicer to think six million Jews were not murdered. I often say no ones grapa in Germany ever killed a Jew. The point being, normally if we don't like our history we simply lie about it.

I hope you folks work it out and can be proud of your nation together!

We've celebrated Australia Day on a bunch of different days over the years. We could change the date, first Monday in August would fill a holiday drought. Or we could have a memorial service for the frontier wars in the morning and a pissup for the rest of the day, much like we do for ANZAC Day. This would serve both parties in the argument and suitably annoy enough people to qualify as a satisfactory compromise.

That question is actually a BIG one for me. Years ago my Iranian brother-in-law was visiting the director (also Iranian) of his sons private school in Dallas, Tx.. Dates are a staple in Iran and she (director) had some of the best ones. He asked her for one and she said she would give him one only if he got one for her. The next day he asked her if she meant what she said but she had forgotten. He then gave her my number and one thing led to the next and that date question turned out beautiful.

I understand why people have observances and wouldn't necessarily want to take them away from anyone...but I'm not really into them myself. If you're not working on holding a space for something every day of the year, it's not really important to you, I think. In that way I see observances as a cop-out.

We just observed MLK day and his message and legacy is something very important that should be kept alive; observances are a kind of insurance policy against losing that thread. So I can't completely disregard them.

Columbus day is horribly fraught; I'm in favor of reworking it into Indigenous People's day. Thanksgiving should be given a facelift: it it most definitely a slap in the face to Native Americans.

The Fourth of July can straight up kiss my ass. I'm so sick of all the flag-waving, fireworks-exploding, BBQ-munching shallow virtue-signalling. Instead of parties where we get drunk and bray about how "proud" we are to be Americans, we should be having sober discussions about our responsibilities as citizens of a democracy, teaching children about the importance of voting, and educating ourselves about how our government and representation works. ...But that's boring. 'Murica!!

Touched a nerve, there.

As for the actual date for any of these, I don't care and I don't think it matters much.
May 8 is simply brilliant, though.

There has been moves in England to make St George`s day 23rd April (also Shakespeare's birthday) a bank holiday. It is unlikely to happen even though all the other counties in the united kingdom have theirs eg. St David. Firstly because successive govts are too stingy to give us an extra day off and also because a curious form of reverse cultural snobbery. English is and remains the dominant language of the world. Sports from England are still the most played etc. Plus there is a collective guilt regarding the legacy of empire. Right wing newspapers regularly print stories of local authorities banning national flag displays. These are always found to be fake news but they have a ring of truth to them that makes them believable. People rarely fly the flag unless it is for those extremely brief moments before England exits the world cup. It simply is not the done thing.

Geee brother.... you know I fought for this country that ooozes... I still live here... it's my home...

I eschew most things considered "patriotic". I really am quite disgusted by most of what other people consider "patriotic". Maybe that's because I have more respect for real history than someone else's ideas about what makes someone a "good American".

it's all perspective I think. I mean Rome invaded England and made us "civilised" and if the shoe had of been on the other foot would any humans naturally take over other countries? I think a lot would of and maybe will. most of our dates and times are based on religion on top of that. not as easy a question to answer as you would first think.