Just another holiday? I’m told that if I don’t shop, or cookout, or do fireworks, then I’m not “in the spirit.”

What happened to celebrating holidays for their intended purposes? Christmas, Easter and Halloween are no longer religious holidays. Thanksgiving is more about overindulgence than the national holiday Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in 1863 as “thanksgiving and praise of our beneficient Father who dwelleth in the heavens.”

The Fourth of July, Independence Day, is supposed to be about the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution (The Documents). I’ll bet some barbecues, ballgames and family reunions will have little or nothing to do with The Documents.

I’ll even venture to say that many people don’t even know what’s in The Documents or for that matter care.

Now please don’t come to my house and stone me. That’s the kind of stuff that brought about The Documents in the first place.

I hear “I can sure use a day off” and nothing like “I think I’ll take a few minutes of my free day and revisit parts of The Documents.”

Most countrymen will say America is special, but is that a true belief? Are Americans genuinely willing to stand up against its antagonists? Consider the passionate dedicated statement of Stephen Hopkins when he signed the Declaration of Independence: “My hand trembles, but my heart does not.”

Thomas Paine wrote, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

Are the words of Thomas Paine and Stephen Hopkins a part of the truths we hold to be self-evident? Sure doesn’t seem that way.

While you’re enjoying an at-risk piece of the American Dream (life and liberty for all), please remember who and what has made it possible.

God bless America.