Didn’t ‘England’ happen after the Romans left?
Centuries after. For hundreds of years what became England was divided into separate kingdoms; Mercia, Wessex, etc. Athelstan was the first king to reign over all of them as king of the English in 927 after booting the Vikings out of York. The Romans withdrew in 409-10.
How about the first broadcast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus?
I nominate the August Bank Holiday, even though it isn’t timed quite right to coincide with my birthday.
NM. Ninjaed.
That must mean the only successful conqueror was Willam and his Normans, and they just stayed.
No indepedence. Period.
We in Britain consider most of the invasions we have suffered over the millennia to have been good things, in the long run and on the whole (although those Vikings were a bit mean), all contributing to the hybrid of peoples and cultures that makes up the British race and British culture. So yes, we have no independence day to celebrate because, at least since the Romans left (and, like most Roman subjects, we didn’t actually want them to go - being part of the Empire was generally recognized, and not just by the British, as a good thing) we have remained independent despite invasions. Invaders get assimilated, not thrown out.
As has been mentioned, our firework night, our nearest analogue to America’s 4th of July, is Guy Fawkes night (aka Bonfire Night), the 5th of November, which celebrated the thwarting of a Catholic terrorist plot to murder the king and the whole of parliament with a massive explosion. Large amounts of gunpowder were placed in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament ready to be detonated, but the plotters were arrested just in time.
Bear in mind that the Kingdom of Wessex itself was ‘west saxons’; they were not natives, if that term has any meaning in England (the word England also derives from ‘Angle-land’). The Angles and the Saxons came over from the northern Germany area and established the Heptarchy. The folks left over when the Romans got out of Dodge were pushed back by the Saxon tide to Wales and Cornwall, which to this day have their own unique culture and language.
The recent AMC show TURN featured Colonists & Brits in Occupied New York celebrating Guy Fawkes Day in 1776. My love for the bonkers fantasy on Fox, Sleepy Hollow, has made me a beginning Revolutionary War Buff. So I’ve had fun picking * TURN* apart.
American colonists did celebrate the day, but usually called it Pope Night. Especially in the virulently anti-Catholic New England colonies, burning an effigy of the Pope was the highlight of the evening. George Washington condemned the celebration in 1775 but it took a while to disappear. (Demographic change in the next century put a lot of post-Puritan Bostonian noses out of joint. Tough.) TURN minimized the anti-Catholic sentiment to protect our modern sensibilities. (And added unhistorical soap opera plots because the Revolution is, like boring. Grrrrr…)
In Colonial & post-Revolutionary America, the various Saints’ Days were occasions for celebrating ethnic pride–George, Andrew, David or Patrick–in the areas where Protestantism was more relaxed. Some New York wags wanted a local saint, so they began promoting St Nicholas. He wasn’t really big in New Amsterdam–the Dutch Reformed were about as likely to venerate saints as the Puritans. But Washington Irving & Clement Moore “discovered” folklore that influenced modern Christmas celebrations.
(Yeah, I waste lots of time studying ancient stuff.)
Not everybody needs an “Independence Day”–but an excuse to shoot off fireworks is always welcome. Diez y Seis is big in Texas.
Guy Fawkes’ Night isn’t actually a public holiday or anything, though. AFAIK every country that celebrates an independence or founding anniversary or whatever gives its public employees the day off and private employers mostly follow suit.
Can I encourage you to speak only for yourself. Unless you are the Queen or Tony Blair or, given it’s the Internet, both.
My grasp of current affairs is a bit weak but I am fairly certain Tony Blair is no longer authorized to speak for Britons either.
I’ve always thought that a good English national day would be the 15th of June, celebrating the signing of Magna Carta.
I suppose it celebrates an independence of sorts; the beginning of the common man’s freedom from the absolute rule of monarchy.
Technically that “beginning” would have been the Charter of Liberties of 1100, though obviously it’s less well remembered.
[nitpick] The British (or English) monarchy was never absolute (not even Charles I or James VII/II attained absolutism), even in the 1200s there were clear rules and limits to the King’s rule, and some concept of the rights of individuals. It was John’s violation of them that prompted wholesale rebellion.[/nitpick]
But yes, I would have sympathy with such a proposal. As for a British day, however, it wouldn’t hold. Magna Carta means nothing to a Scot.
There are commemorations around Easter to mark the 1916 Rising but ours isn’t a Independence Day it’s St. Patrick’s day which is just a celebration of Ireland and being Irish.
My knowledge of British history has been horribly exposed, like a Treen in a disabled spaceship.
I blame a childhood blighted by Thatcher, frozen meals and Rod Stewart.
Thousands of years?
Good point. No country has existed (in its present form) for “thousands of years”.
Can’t the UK celebrate July 4th as “Good Riddance Day”? Sounds like as good a reason as any for a day off to eat BBQ and light explosives shaped like toys.