Transcript edited for length and clarity.
Clay Wallace, WUKY
Good morning. You're listening to 91.3 WUKY, NPR Lexington. I'm Clay Wallace. With me today is Tara Strouch, an associate professor of history at Center College, writing a book about the history of U.S. holidays. Thanks for coming on today, Tara.
Tara Strauch, Associate Professor of History at Centre College
Thanks for having me. Good morning, Clay.
Clay
This weekend is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. How early on were we celebrating July 4th as Independence Day?
Tara
Oh, we were celebrating it immediately. You know, most famously, John Adams was convinced we would celebrate July 2nd instead of July 4th. But, from the very first moment, Americans were pretty excited to celebrate.
Clay
What did those earliest celebrations look like?
Tara
You know, not that different really from the way we often celebrate today. Blowing things up is a favorite pastime in the form of fireworks or firecrackers or even just really big bonfires. Having balls for upper class people - you know, going to a dance with a nice dinner. Another thing that they did in the early days was to do what were called "illuminations" where you would create a silhouette that you could shine a light on and that would then project the image onto a blank wall. It was showing a scene in a classier way than blowing things up. And then toasts - lots and lots of toasts and drinking.
Clay
So, fireworks were always a part of the celebration?
Tara
Fireworks were always a part of the celebration.
Clay
What did the early fireworks look like? What were people doing?
Tara
Certainly nothing big the way we would go to a civic show today, and not as bright and colorful as they would have been today. So you're thinking something much more like what you would be doing in a backyard today versus the big public celebrations. In the past, the noise was often more important in some ways than what you were seeing.
Clay
Are there parts of the celebration that have kind of fallen away over the years?
Tara
Sure! So when we talk about the 1790s, people were very political in the way they celebrated. Lots of people wanted to go and be with people who are very explicitly of the same political parties and allegiances. You would have political groups meeting in bars or in public spaces and giving these incredibly political toasts, celebrating the politicians they liked best and the policies they liked best. Certainly, we still have political opinions today but I would say we are not as interested in getting together in these explicitly political groups on the actual Fourth of July.
One of the reasons is because we have these really big civic celebrations today. So, the city of Lexington or the city of Danville, where I'm at, will have these public displays that are free to watch either from your backyard or from a public space. That intentionally brings us together, regardless of class or regardless of what part of the city we live in or what political allegiances we might have. One of the things that has kind of ebbed and flowed over time is how much overt politics plays in our particular celebrations.
Clay
How have we celebrated previous milestones? So, like, the 100th anniversary, the 150th, the 200th?
Tara
Yeah, so if we look at 1876, for example, one of the things we know, is that it's really loud. There are lots of fireworks and firecrackers. Blank pistol guns, where you can shoot blanks, were really popular.
By 1876, Cities are much larger than they were in 1776, and it's a little hard for lower class people in 1876 to escape the city. It's expensive. They don't really have the resources to do that. So you have a really crowded celebration that's happening in 1876. You also have lots of immigrants who have come to the nation by 1876. You have lots of German immigrants and Irish immigrants, immigrants from Eastern Europe, who are celebrating America's independence in the same way that all other Americans are - with fireworks and drinking and food - but a lot of times they are also combining that with showing off what makes them unique, so they're showing off their ethnic heritages. You might have Fourth of July parades in 1876 that include Italian-American clubs or Polish-American clubs who are marching the parade, showing off what it means to them to be an American.
When we talk about 1976, the celebration looks entirely different. By 1976, fireworks are much more regulated. Public celebrations, civic celebrations sponsored by cities, are much larger and it's much much easier to leave town. By 1976, people are much more likely to go to a nearby lake or to go on vacation, right? To use the federal highway system to escape the noise in the crowds of the city.
In some respects, by 1976, we're celebrating both together in these big civic celebrations and really separately because you can go to you or your friend's lake house.
Clay
I'm kind of thinking about the nostalgia aspect of the Fourth of July. So when I think of holidays that inspire nostalgia, I think of Christmas, but I also think of the Fourth of July. Like, in the Music Man, the whole play is situated around this big Fourth of July celebration.
Why do you think it sits in people's minds as such a major holiday?
Tara
That's a great question. The Fourth of July is such an interesting patriotic holiday. Even though today it's a federal holiday, it was very much a grassroots holiday, right? People chose to celebrate on July 4th, 1776. No civic person, no governor of a newly-made state told them to do that.
I always think one of the reasons it feels nostalgic is because it is this fascinating combination of grassroots and communal, right? Because entire communities are coming together to do that. And that combination of choice and community, I think, creates the perfect chemistry for nostalgia.
Clay
Are there times where the holiday itself has felt controversial, where there's been significant pushback against celebrations?
Tara
Yes. So, one of the classic examples would be the Civil War, where border states like Kentucky had lots of individuals who did not feel like celebrating the Fourth of July, because they felt more aligned with the Confederacy, but where Union supporters felt quite committed to showing their commitment to a united nation. That's one example.
The example I really like to give is that one of the reasons we have these big civic celebrations today is because, in 1909, the Journal of the American Medical Association and some women who were fighting for change created what's called the Safe and Sane Fourth of July campaign, where they advocated for fireworks to be much less available to regular people so they could try to make the holiday safer.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Fourth of July was quite dangerous. It was so easy to buy fireworks and firecrackers and all kinds of other explosives and they were given to small children - small children by themselves. There were very little restrictions on where you could shoot these things off and so every Fourth of July there were fires, there were deaths, there were injuries. Insurance companies hated the Fourth of July.
So, the Safe and Same Fourth of July campaign was designed to try to make the holiday safer. But, in making the holiday safer, it was also forcing people to change how they celebrate it. It was telling people that the way they had celebrated for years, for their entire lives, for generations, was wrong. And many Americans pushed back on that, right? The idea of getting rid of fireworks or making it harder to access was unacceptable to them.
Clay
That's so interesting. It makes me think of the cities that have pivoted to drone shows today.
Tara
Yeah, and I think it's very related. How can we have these big communal celebrations? How can we celebrate American-ness in a way that's not going to injure people? The Safe and Same Fourth of July campaign understood this. One of the ways that it got traction - the ways that convinced cities to start regulating fireworks - was they would make statistics and tables that showed how many individuals died or were injured by fireworks every year versus how many people had died in things like the Battles of Lexington and Concord and made the argument through those statistics that celebrating the holiday was often more deadly than actually winning the American Revolution.
Clay
Wow.
What is something that you've learned in this research that you think is worth carrying with us into this upcoming Independence Day?
Tara
One of the things I've learned is that Americans have always found ways to celebrate together. There's not a whole lot of wrong ways to celebrate the 4th of July. When Thoreau decided to write Walden's Pond in the 19th century, he chose to start his year in the wilderness on the Fourth of July.
He thought that what he was doing, kind of being by himself in nature, was deeply American. At the same time, for lots of other Americans, that American-ness comes from being with other people, with other Americans and sharing that experience. So one of my takeaways is that there are many ways to be American and to celebrate American-ness. And the Fourth of July has got room for all of them.
Clay
What can you share with us about your upcoming book?
Tara
My book is ultimately really fascinated by the way that Americans have made holidays for themselves. People tend to assume that holidays sort of happen to you. "Oh, it's Christmas again. Oh, you know, you can't stop a holiday from coming whether you're ready or not." And commercialism has done a lot to make us feel like we're always kind of rushing to keep up with the holiday seasons.
But the reality is that we control holidays and that many individual Americans have been deeply involved in creating the holiday calendar that we have. My book gets to look at some of these really amazing people. A lot of them are women, like Sarah Josepha Hale, who is integral to making the holiday of Thanksgiving.
The book tells people about these past holidays and how they developed, and then hopefully also shows us that we can have whatever kind of holidays we want in the future. And if we are unhappy with a holiday, we can change it.
Clay
And what's the title of your book?
Tara
The title of my book is Patriotic Tetanus: The History of American Holidays and the People Who Made Them.
Clay
This has been a conversation with Tara Strouch, Associate Professor of History at Center College. Thank you, Tara.
Tara
Thank you, Clay.