I suppose Independence Day is just one of the most famous and most elaborately celebrated national holiday in the world and may therefore receive more attention than many other national holidays.
How is Canada Day commenced?
The British have their Guy Fawkes Night (November 5th) and the French commemorate the storming of the Bastille (July 14th).
Over here in Germany the "national holiday" passes rather unnoticed with hardly any celebrations at all. Economists even spoke up to redefine our national holiday from october 3rd (the day of the German reunification) to the first sunday in october in order to prevent any working time from being lost whenever october 3rd is a working day. Moreover a religious holiday, Penance Day, lost its status as a work free day when october 3rd was established as such... not exactly ceremonial, is it? :unsure:
Another day considered for a national holiday was November 9th, a day which is important because on November 9th 1918 the revolution began which put an end to the Empire and WW1 and because on November 9th 1989 the Berlin wall was brought down
.
However, November 9th 1938 also saw one of the worst pogrom against jews in the time before WW2 (it has sometimes been euphemised as "Kristallnacht" because people thought that the glas shards of the many broken windows of synagoges or shops owned by Jews looked like crystal). For that reason November 9th can hardly be an occassion for celebration over here. There is no national holiday over here comparable to any of yours.
