BURLINGTON, Vt. — The parade floats are back in storage. The last sparkler has gone cold. And Daniel Cantor Yalowitz is asking Vermonters to think about what comes after the national holiday noise.
His new column, published this week, doesn’t dwell on the Founding Fathers or the Declaration of Independence. It sidesteps the grand narrative entirely.
Yalowitz, a columnist, turns the focus inward. He wants readers to consider the personal dates, the private victories, the small anniversaries that never make the town calendar but still matter. “Move over, July Fourth!
You’ve had your turn,” he writes. The line is direct.
It almost feels like a dismissal of the public spectacle in favor of something quieter. The column lands in a state where community rituals run deep. Maple sugar season.
Town meeting day. The first hike up Camel’s Hump after the mud season ends. Yalowitz seems to be arguing those local, personal markers deserve the same weight as the federally mandated ones.
He points to “other significant dates, people, and events to recognize.” For him, celebration is not about the party. It is about recognition.
“Life is made more sacred because we humans have the capacity and awareness to celebrate ourselves and others as rites and rituals of passage throughout the course of our lives,” he writes. That is a heavy claim. Sacred.
Rites. Rituals.
He is not talking about cake and candles. The column acknowledges the hard parts of daily existence. The conflicts.
The awkward moments. The frustrations. Yalowitz calls them “normal, natural, and part and parcel of the human condition.” No sugarcoating.
But he insists that joy is equally native to our species. “We also have the inborn potential to experience joy, achievement, and benchmarks along the way,” he writes.
“And, both to differentiate these golden moments and to appreciate their occurrence, we celebrate.” There is a specific power in those golden moments, he suggests. “Moments of celebration can be incredibly liberating, as though something completed is a form of liberation.” The act of marking an achievement, he argues, frees people from the weight of waiting. From the unfinished.
From the grind. For readers in Burlington and beyond, the column poses an uncomfortable question.
If July Fourth is the big, public, expected celebration, what are the private ones? A year of sobriety. The last chemotherapy treatment.
The day the farm finally broke even. The anniversary of a parent’s death that gets marked with a quiet walk instead of a party. Yalowitz doesn’t provide a list.
He doesn’t tell anyone what to celebrate. He simply opens the door and suggests that the calendar holds more than the federal holidays printed in red ink.
The choice, he implies, belongs to the individual. The culture of the celebration belongs to the community. The column reads as a nudge.
A gentle one. A reminder that the human condition includes both the struggle and the release.
And that the release, when it comes, is worth naming. Worth marking. Worth calling liberation.
Sources
- Columnist Daniel Cantor Yalowitz: What is your celebration of …
- Listen: Columnist Daniel Cantor Yalowitz: What is your …
