Can we admit, honestly, that throwing a birthday party is a little bit embarrassing?
I mean, when you throw one for yourself?
It’s a different deal, when your wife throws you a surprise party for your 40th birthday. A surprise 40th birthday party is tragic, but it’s not embarrassing. Tragic, because what you’re really celebrating is the beginning of the end.
But… when you throw a party for yourself, and invite your friends to gather and commemorate your existence?
So unseemly. We cringe at the very thought.
But that’s exactly what’s going on here in America in 2026. Governments and organizations all across the country are making preparations for America’s 250th birthday, to be celebrated on July 4th this year with fireworks and music and speeches. Interminable speeches, I would imagine.
Granted, the United States of America is the richest and most powerful nation on the face of the earth, thanks mostly to the fact that it includes California.
The United States didn’t include California 250 years ago, however. When the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, there were only 13 colonies involved, and about the only thing the gathered representatives at the Continental Congress all agreed upon was a dislike for King George III. About half of the colonies thought slavery was a good idea, for example.
Apparently, the Declaration was approved on July 4th — but historians tell us that it wasn’t signed until August 2. So at least a few of us think the nation would be jumping the gun if the birthday gets celebrated on July 4th. In my experience, a contract is not a contract until you actually sign it.
Colorado didn’t “sign the contract” until 100 years later.
In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant recommended that Congress pass the Colorado Statehood Bill. After several amendments, the bill was passed with one stipulation: Coloradans must take a final vote to ratify the Colorado State Constitution.
In anticipation of that vote, delegates to the Colorado Constitutional Convention met at Constitution Hall in Denver — of all places? — to write the Constitution.
Meanwhile, newspapers from the East Coast were happy to express their distaste for the whole idea, arguing that Colorado did not deserved to be a state, and labeling the citizens:
…a bunch of rough miners and reckless bushwhackers, there solely because the state of semi-barbarism prevalent in that wild country suits their vagrant habits…
As a long-time resident of Colorado, I can attest to the fact that the East Coast newspapers were describing only certain Coloradans, and possibly even a minority of us.
Unfazed by the negative comments, 39 Convention delegates — miners and bushwhackers though they may have been — worked tirelessly for 85 days to finalize the State Constitution. With virtually no opposition, it was ratified by Colorado’s semi-barbarian voters on July 1, 1876.
So we have this little conflict going on. in my opinion. Are we celebrating the 250th birthday of the 13 colonies… several of which I personally don’t appreciate being in the same union with…
…even though this was decades before the best parts of the United States were added to the Union? (California in 1850 and Colorado in 1876.)
I understand that many readers will object to a reference to California as being one of the “best parts of the United States”. Presumably, those critics are not fond of avocados? Or Hollywood movies? Or iPhones?
At any rate, we’re going to see a big fat birthday party celebrated this summer on the wrong day, for the wrong reasons, honoring the wrong states.
Did I mention… “embarrassing”?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.