Another Fourth of July — or Scare the Bejesus Out of Animals Day — has passed. Our rural idyll has returned to what passes for normal here … which, thankfully, is unrecognizable as “normal” anywhere that is, in fact, normal. Wherever that is…

It has never been exactly clear to me why our national holiday should be celebrated by exploding things instead of, say, having an ice cream cone. I’m sure that the word that we were no longer happy being a British colony was explosive when it arrived in London, but you know the British: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” I can see old King George III receiving the news and thinking, “Well now, that’s a bother…”

And if you think the fireworks have something to do with “the rockets red glare” in our national anthem, think again; that was written more than 30 years later, during the War of 1812.

No, if you disliked the noise and ruckus in and around Quartermaster Harbor yesterday, don’t blame it on our anthem and don’t complain to this newspaper. Complain to John Adams. It’s all his fault. On July 3, 1776, he wrote to his wife Abigail that the occasion should be commemorated “with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other…” Adams apparently was a party animal. He seems also to have been unaware that he did not have an actual continent yet, just a fractious federation of so-called states that took another decade of wrangling to draft and ratify a governing constitution. This, of course, is the model our Congress is following today in drafting a health care bill. Or anything else.

Then again, bonfires and fireworks were nothing new to Adams; they had been a British tradition for nearly two centuries. Bonfire Night, celebrated with hilltop fires and fireworks every Nov. 4 in villages across the length and breadth of Britain, commemorates the night in 1605 when Guy Fawkes was caught attempting to ignite 36 barrels of gunpowder to blow up the Houses of Parliament. He was part of a group of zealots who were fed up with the way their government was treating them.

Something to ponder, perhaps.

And while we are on the subject of noisy Fourth’s, please also do not write this newspaper to complain about the hydrofoil race. Come on folks: It happens once a year and lasts only a few minutes. This hardy little band of maritime lunatics rockets around the island providing an important public service: They are your morning wake-up call so you can get started early to celebrate the holiday. Blame this on Adams, too. Like Ed Sullivan, he promised a “Really Good Shew.”

— Will North is an island novelist and sometime columnist for The Beachcomber.