America has a big birthday coming. How could we possibly celebrate it?

In the course of human events, America has come to agree on one thing: that any modern birthday celebration of itself will involve sizzling hunks of meat, Springsteen in the ears, smoke in the eyes, sulfur in the nostrils, rockets’ red glare.

What’s less self-evident is how to appropriately mark a big birthday — like America’s 250th, two short years away — at a time when the country is so politically split that many Americans may be ready to declare the Great Experiment kaput after November. A survey this year by Gallup found that 67 percent of adults feel either “very proud” or “extremely proud” to be American — down from 85 percent in 2013 and 90 percent in 2003.

Read more at the Washington Post.