So last night the neighborhood resounded to the sound of random explosions. I was confused until I remembered that today is the new Federal High Holy Day “Juneteenth.” Yay, strike up the marching bands, fire up the amateur and unwise fireworks. So, how enchanting of a day is this going to be going forth? Here are some hints from Our Betters in the media:

How to Celebrate Juneteenth Without Misappropriating It

How thrilling: a “holiday” that comes with racialized lecturing. I don’t recall such things for, say, Saint Patricks Day or Bastille Day or Pearl Harbor Day or 9/11 or Leif Erikson Day. And where are the lectures on how to celebrate Yuri’s Night? Where, indeed, are the jeremiads on how to celebrate Apollo 11, or the Wright Brothers, or D-Day or VE Day or VJ Day or The Day The Berlin Wall Came Down or The Day The USSR Went The Frak Away or Trinity Test Day or Edison Lights A Bulb Day or Moses Browning Day Goddard Launches A Liquid Rocket Day? To be honest, though, some other holidays *do* come with lectures… Cinco De Mayo (Drink Like A Fish Day) and Dia Die Los Muertos (Mexican Halloween) tend to come with finger-wagging harangues about how we’re not supposed to view them as lightly as St. Patty’s Drink Like A Fish Day or Actual Halloween.  And of course Columbus Day tends to comes with screeds about how it *shouldn’t* be celebrated and the fact that history lined up in such a way that *you* exist should be seen as a monumental tragedy.

So, yeah, this one will be a hoot, at least until it is “celebrated” like all other basically meaningless artificial holidays: