Very widely. We still have fireworks for Mr Fawkes (New Zealand)…no we don’t know why!
It is fun though.
“Great Britain - Hey, It’s Better Than A Poke In The Eye With A Sharp Stick Day”
That’s news to me.
So that’s not an excuse for the Irish source in the OP. For what it’s worth St Patrick’s day is probably the closest we get. It’s not an independance celebration, but does focus on Irish national/cultural identity.
There’s generally some muppet agitating for a 4th of July “We’re shot of those pesky Yankees” holiday, but I didn’t think it had come to anything.
Which would make us want to burn him, surely. Or perhaps I’m mishing the point of the fire.
Anyway, suspect away. We go mad for bonfire night up here. And as for fireworks, the cities are just as unliveable for the month preceding Guy Fawkes Night in Scotland as anywhere else in the UK.
I’ve heard some people - including Norwegians, who should know better! - refer to our May 17th holiday as “Norway’s Independence Day”. No, no, no! It’s properly called Constitution Day, and if that isn’t as catchy, well tough.
The road that brought Norway back as an independent, sovreign nation didn’t happen to have a single event that could be commemorated as Independence Day. The country went from being an independent nation, to becoming a province of Denmark, to a brief period of legal limbo I’m not even going to attempt to explain, to a union with Sweden that was in any case intended to be a union of equals, to the end of that union and full independence.
I suppose there’s always St. George’s Day. Which is also Shakespeare’s birthday! What a wonderful day to celebrate England’s heritage, its history, its cultural ideals …
(Errr … it’s April 23rd, isn’t it? I can never remember.)
Easter Sunday is still celebrated by some folk in Ireland, but not because it’s Easter.
Which leads to something I’ve always wondered about.
What’s proper manners for a poor 'umble Yank when faced with the prospect of celebrating July 4th with some folks around from Great Britain?
It somehow seems rude to say ‘Dude, let’s go celebrate that time we made the first chink in your world bestriding empire!’
It does get a little awkward, doesn’t it? I’ve run into this myself.
I’ve assumed the correct approach is the same as celebrating christmas with atheists - concentrate on eating a lot and don’t mention the war 
I don’t know about the proper etiquette for being an uncouth Yank in the UK for the 4th of July, but…
My father used to work for a company owned by the Brits. The office he was working in was in eastern Massachusetts, and everytime he got a new supervisor (invariably British) he would take the supervisor out to lunch at the Village Green Inn in Concord. Followed by a trip to Old North Bridge. He would make a point of showing the graves of the two Hessian troops killed at the skirmish at the bridge, and say, “Remember, we won that war.”
Fortunately for my father, most of the limeys he’d worked for directly had decent senses of humor.
Well, here in Canada we have Canada Day, 1 July, which falls close enough to the US Independence Day that it often shares the same long weekend…
…although this year in Toronto, it should have been called “Let’s party because we’re Greek, or had a Greek ancestor, or are living in the same neighbourhood with someone who had a Greek ancestor, or whatever” Day.
So not exactly something that’s going to mean anything to the rest of the UK.
St George’s Day has always puzzled me. Why that day, and what did St George ever do for England?
Hastings and 1066. Doesn’t really mean anything to Britain as the nation didn’t exist at the time.
If we’re looking for a day comparible to the American Independence day, a far better date would be the 1st of May, being the date in 1707 that united the seperate kingdoms of England & Wales with Scotland, creating the country of Great Britain. As the Act Of Union says…
I doubt you’ll get much enthusiasm for the idea of making it a national holiday or anything though. Not to mention other things the same Act has to say about “Papists”, and the lack of the whole Irish dimension. It also clashes with the international May Day holiday.
And I don’t think you’ll encounter too many people in the UK these days too concerned about who won what with American Independence. Well, in anything other than an academic interest.
Celebrating our independence as the day some of us started signing a piece of paper (rather than the day we actually became independent) seems no less odd to me;)
I think it varies around the UK. It doesn’t really matter what you say, though, the main thing is to ensure that by the end of the night you’re arguing vociferously about World War II. You know the drill.
Err … he killed a dragon? In Cappadocia? Or something. If he existed at all.
Of course, in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, the Redcross Knight is the personification of the English martial virtues, who shows us how to uphold virtue, conquer evil, and cross the road safely … oh, wait, that’s the Green Cross Code man … same thing, really, I suppose.
What was the question again?
I love Wikipedia. I mean it. I love it as a man loves a woman.
Do The English even care about this? I mean, is it a deep cultural wound to have lost the colonies to an uprising? Didn’t George III send over the cannon-fodder troops to quell it anyway–as if he didn’t really care all that much about preventing the loss as much as addressing the idea of an insurrection? My understanding of history is not strong, but it has always seemed to me that our Independence Day was more important to us as a birthday than to the English to whom it was little more than “the day they finally came out and said they didn’t want to play with us anymore.”
Northern Ireland has the 12th July as a public holiday to celebrate their independence (of sorts…I suppose 
, kinda)