Interesting how July 4th gets fireworks and parades, while September 17th (the day the Constitution was signed) gets a mandatory class in schools and nothing else, nobody gets the day off, offices stay open ,life goes on...
Maybe it's just practical, or maybe there's something to the fact that we celebrate independence but not the framework that followed, the document that centralized power, legitimized taxation, and created the machinery of the state, not exactly firework material.
I'm not American, so I'm genuinely curious. Why don't you celebrate it? Is it just not a tradition?
Because nobody likes to celebrate the 2nd try.
First try:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
I always found it curious that the names are backwards, the "federalists" were the centralists, the "anti-federalists" the decentralizers. In 1787 I'd probably have been an anti-federalist... today I'd go further: not 13, not 1, none. No exit, no consent, freedom is measured by whether you can leave, not by how many rule you
Back when the default assumption was people could take of themself.
Essentially, it's because Independence Day got there first. People were celebrating July 4th as soon as 1777, one year after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration was almost universally loved, so July 4th became the de facto holiday.
September 17th... well for one thing the Constitution was incredibly controversial when first ratified. I am a huge supporter of it and believe we should celebrate Constitution Day more, but it has never really caught on. The first time anyone celebrated it was in 1911, and since then it has mostly been something that those dedicated to law and history talk about more than the general public.
If you want to learn more, these two wikipedia articles are really useful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(United_States)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Day_and_Citizenship_Day