Fireworks explode over Pendleton during the 2019 Fourth of July fireworks display. The city’s Fourth of July firework show has followed the Fourth of July parade in canceling its 2020 event, another event forced to take a year off due to the fallout from COVID-19.

With the Fourth of July holiday looming, it is often easy to forget just how close the whole American independence effort came to failure.

We often sort of take it for granted that, as Americans, pretty much everything we’ve accomplished in our storied history as a nation was foreordained.

That is a nice thought, but not exactly accurate.

For example, it took the 13 colonies seven years to finally emerge victorious from Great Britain and secure the chance to execute the great experiment we call democracy. On the way to that victory there occurred many missteps and defeats.

Saturday’s holiday — the official observance of the actions of the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 — marks in many ways a brief period of respite for the nation. There remains little doubt the nation as it stands in 2020 is saddled with an array of difficult and contentious issues. Yet, the Fourth of July bestows upon all of us a moment to reflect on the fact that the great test of democracy, fashioned by the Founding Fathers, endures.

We still conduct free elections; America still transfers political power in a peaceful manner. We have challenges — many of them very serious with long-term implications — yet our experiment sustains, and often reinvents itself, constantly.

Despite the always looming specter of COVID-19, this weekend’s holiday should be about many things — family and fun just to name just two — but it should also be a moment, a time, to remember that despite all of the nation’s perceived flaws, we are a democracy still going strong more than 200 years after a group of brave men decided to risk it all for liberty.

Have a safe and enjoyable Fourth of July.