On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. The greatness is not the picnic. It is a people asserting that rights come before kings, and that a government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
That sentence has had to be paid for — at Trenton, at Gettysburg, at Normandy, and in county clerk offices where the next generation registers to vote. Independence Day is triumph and perseverance in the same breath: we declared, then we had to become worthy of the declaration.
Celebrate it in the open. A free country should not whisper its birthday.