A feel good celebration

A Florida community comes together to affirm freedom and hope for the future.

Give Celebration, Florida, a reason to live up to its name, and you've got a festivity of the highest order. Emotion runs like a gentle river through this community of people who thrive on being neighbors, Southerners, and Americans.

On a Fourth of July morning, still cool before the coming sizzle, the early stirrings of the day's patriotism make you want to shout with joy. It's epidemic and inviting; you want brass music and gigantic banners.

But Celebration shows you the better way-the quieter way-knowing that today the heart matters, not the grandeur or glamour. The parade, charming and homemade, forms long before the call to march. It's a time for friends to visit, to compare floats, to dote on youngsters in a pots-and-pans band, and to shoot pictures destined to live long after the day is done.

There's a 90-year-old on a decorated three-wheeler bike, and a few dozing babies are snuggling in bunting, resting in their parents' arms. Age boundaries melt away as the strains of Sousa play in the background. The sheer jubilance grows as the minutes pass. People here don't mind if you see their feelings. Their smiles glow, their hopefulness shows. It's a Southern thing-maybe from times when pride was all we had-that makes us want to say: Jump on the bandwagon, and let's show the world.

Of course, the world isn't here today. It's just us, reaffirming what's on every mind and, this year more than ever, in every American soul. Red, white, and blue have never looked or felt better. Life seems good.

In due time, the parade commences. A white-bearded Uncle Sam ushers the way into a day of music, picnics, shopping, games, and memory making. Kids get wet in jets of water, and the occasional onlooker feels mellow enough to snooze on the grass.

We draw power from the mood, from the feel-good old-fashionedness of it all. And when the blazing finale of fireworks leaps above the town's quiet lake, each burst of color charges us to go forward into this night-and the days beyond.

The people of Celebration have brought us together today. May we never drift apart.

CAROLANNE GRIFFITH ROBERTS

Family, community, land, culture, heritage, and matters of faith hold special meaning for Southerners. That is the essence of Southern Spirit. Look for this column in future issues.

Copyright Southern Progress Corporation Jul 2002
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