"WHY DO YOU PEOPLE DO THIS?"

My Canadian boss yelled at my crazy American ways again yesterday, for the way we write the date (the title of the entry is what he actually said. I had no idea what he was referring to at first).

America writes the date: July 16, 2008.
Canada and Europe writes the date: 16 July, 2008.

He tried to change my naughty ways, and explained that in a decade there are 120 "16th", 10 July's, and only 1 2008. So we should be writing the date in descending order of how often the numbers appear in a decade.

I'll concede that the Canadian way does make more sense, but I'm not changing my ways now. I'm a stubborn Ugly American. I do find the tiny culture differences fascinating though. How did every western country start doing something one way, except one? America writes the date "weird," England drives on the "wrong" side of the road. What happened in history to account for these differences?

"You Americans are weird." "Yep."

One of my bosses is Canadian. He came into the office today and demanded to know why Americans use the phrases "Fourth of July" and "Independence Day" interchangeably, because we don't do this for any other holiday.

"You don't say, 'what are you doing for the 25th of December?' or 'Man, I can't wait for the parade on January 1st.'" He went on to point out that in Canada, July 1st was just "Independence Day," not the first of July.

So I looked it up, because that is an interesting question (I already came out as a nerd, remember?). The best answer I could come up with is that there are records of people celebrating the fourth of July as a holiday since 1777. But the first recorded use of the name Independence Day didn't occur until 1791. My theory was that because people had been used to saying "Let's celebrate the fourth of July!" for over a decade, referring to the day by the date slipped into the vernacular. Also, the day wasn't made into a holiday until 1870, so its also very possible that even though some states and areas were calling it Independence Day, the name didn't spread to the other areas of the country until the late 1800s, resulting in people being so used to saying "the fourth of July" that it stuck.

I'll admit, my theory is a little weak. If you have a better idea I'd love to hear it.

This question and conversation also led me to learn that every state in the Union has a state anthem except for New Jersey. New Jersey's unofficial anthem is "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen, while all the other states' songs (in my opinion) kinda suck. So, in the ongoing battle to find out which is the best state in the Union, New Jersey could very well be winning the "coolest song" round, but choices not to even enter itself into that race. That's ballsy.