Admit it: You’re pretty jazzed to be in America at this time of year. Strawberries from farms around the Upper Valley are red all the way through. White daisies are as ubiquitous as daylight. Blue swimming pools in Hanover, Bethel and Woodstock are full of laughing children. On Tuesday, we enter the 241st year of American independence. This weekend, no matter what turbulence lurks in your life, you are feeling the freedom.

The current season is one of great patriotism, an idea that we Americans embrace with unique fervor. In many places around the globe, the snippets of patriotism that we see are restricted to the Olympic Games, political elections and military parades. Through these prisms, our foreign friends seem bent on a more muted form of patriotism; there is always an air of solemnity at official events, and a whiff of prescribed enthusiasm at sporting events. (Consider how all soccer stadiums seem to bulge with crowds who do one thing: sing. Compare that with the different atmospheres and crowd attitudes at NFL stadiums around the U.S.) Being patriotic rarely seems to be much fun for people outside of America.

I know that is a wildly simplistic and perhaps idiotic generalization. But when I lived in rural Burgundy, I can tell you that I never saw anyone dressed up as Marianne, France’s version of Uncle Sam. No one in my village could give you the French equivalent of “American as Mom and apple pie.” Burgundians don’t throw their arms over each others’ shoulders and belt out patriotic songs, even on Bastille Day.

By contrast, American patriotism is a cornucopia of our individualism. Think of all the way our American pride manifests itself. Just glance at a catalog I got recently: American flags on indoor/outdoor rugs, wine glasses, polo shirts. Online, the bonanza continues: onesies with Abraham Lincoln wearing shades, and dog bandanas, vintage shaving mugs, cufflinks, and parasols covered with the Stars and Stripes. There is seemingly no end to American creativity when it comes to showing the world how wonderful it is to be us.

When we turn music on, the patriotic assault is hard to dodge. No matter your Sirius XM, Spotify or Pandora channel, you’re certain to encounter the artistic take on what it means to live here. I could make a playlist full of songs that no self-respecting American would dream of turning off: R.O.C.K in the U.S.A., This Land is Your Land, God Bless the USA, Ray Charles’ version of America the Beautiful, Take Me Home, Country Roads, and America — a song that can give as many goosebumps as the reading of the Declaration of Independence, whether you are listening to Neil Diamond’s lyrics or Simon and Garfunkel’s take —would all make the cut. On the B side, we could delve into another aspect of American patriotism, namely our right to poke fun at ourselves, or even roundly criticize our society. When one hears all that inside an anthem that brings a stadium crowd to its feet, you know it’s an American song. If you just skip over those pesky lyrics, Born in the USA could easily be our national anthem. Who hasn’t felt a twinge of moral conflict while turning up the volume on Pink Houses, American Girl, Fortunate Son, or American Pie?

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being too harsh on my French friends, so I reached out to some good Gauls for their take. Jean-François Leon, who was raised in France and now lives in Norwich, commented that while there are some patriotic songs in French culture, they are violent songs, rooted in the Revolution, not popular hits. He continued, “It is unimaginable to envision a French person burning the flag.” Naively, I thought it was because they have a deeper reverence for the bleu, blanc, rouge. He quickly disabused me of that notion, explaining that the opposite is true: French wouldn’t burn the flag because the flag itself has such little value in French life. “If we burned it, it wouldn’t shock anyone, so we would never do it.”

Béatrice Surdon, the daughter of one of my best friends in Burgundy, lives in Montreal. When she visits the U.S, she is always impressed by how many flags she sees. “Each time I go to the USA, I am amazed to see so many cottages in the countryside, expressing their patriotism.” She continued, “This American patriotism is such a contrast with my home country. In France, you will never see flags on a house. Patriotism is now out of the French vocabulary, because for most of us, it means something old-fashioned. Even in art, we never express it. I regret that the French are not more patriotic.”

Her comments led my mind to the cinema, where our relationship with our national identity and culture is especially complex. Is it possible to explain to someone how films like American Pie, American Beauty, American Graffiti,American Psycho, American Gangster, Born on the Fourth of July, Forrest Gump, Glory, Hidden Figures and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington make millions of Americans disgusted and saddened while making them laugh and cry tears of pride, oftentimes within the same film?

In the documentary about the Grateful Dead, Long Strange Trip, Sam Cutler, an Englishman who worked for the band, observes, “Americans have got this very strange and interesting preoccupation with the discovery of what constitutes America ... people leave home and go out in search of America. People in England don’t set out and leave home and go in search of England. That would be quite preposterous.”

I think it is fair to say that a central part of our patriotism is our quest to square the millions of circles in American life, to somehow make sense of the infiniteness of our country. What we discover along the way is often unsettling and deeply emotional. It can also be surprising, life-affirming and glorious. Is it possible that the combination of those experiences — the good and the bad — make us somehow prouder to be us? I don’t have the answer, but I count myself lucky to live in a place where I get to ask the question.

Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.

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