Independence Day in the United States

Yes. Independence Day is one of the eleven legal public holidays set out in 5 U.S.C. § 6103. Federal offices close, federal employees receive the day off with pay, and every state observes it.

It is the national day of the United States and is among the most widely granted paid holidays in the private sector, although no federal law requires private employers to provide it.

Independence Day is fixed to July 4, so it falls on a different weekday each year.

The federal observed-date rule applies because the date is fixed. When July 4 is a Saturday, federal employees take Friday July 3; when it is a Sunday, they take Monday July 5. The commemoration itself stays on July 4 either way.

The Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The vote for independence itself had been taken two days earlier, on July 2, which John Adams expected would be the date remembered.

Most delegates signed the engrossed copy on August 2, 1776, not on July 4. The date on the document is the date of adoption, which is what fixed July 4 in the public memory.

Congress made Independence Day an unpaid federal holiday for federal employees in 1870 and made it paid in 1938.

The first organised celebration was held in Philadelphia on July 4, 1777, with bells, bonfires and a thirteen-gun salute — one for each state.