Looking at the Fourth of July & It’s Connection with Christmas

As we celebrate Independence Day, I wonder if we truly understand what we are celebrating, what we are remembering, what we are a part of. I would like to share some of our heritage with you now, as I found it in an article by David Barton, founder and president of Wallbuilders.

John Adams believed that the Fourth of July should become a religious holiday – a day when we remembered God’s hand in deliverance and a day of religious activities when we committed ourselves to Him in “solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.” Such was the spirit of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of those who led it, evidenced even further in the words of John Quincy Adams, one who was deeply involved in the activities of the Revolution.

In 1837, when he was 69 years old, John Adams delivered a Fourth of July speech at Newburyport, Massachusetts. They had asked him to address them because he was old enough to remember what went on during the American Revolution, and they wanted an eye-witness to tell them of it! He asked them: “Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [the Fourth of July]? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?”

According to John Quincy Adams, Christmas and the Fourth of July were intrinsically connected. On the Fourth of July, the Founders simply took the precepts of Christ which came into the world through His birth (Christmas) and incorporated those principles into civil government.