Woo hoo, day off, day off, day off

Who would have ever thought that I would be so excited about the Fourth of July? I'm mainly just excited because it's a day that I don't have to work...and because I only have one more day after that to work this week. We're cutting out of work on Thursday and Friday to go to my inlaws house at Table Rock Lake for a long weekend. Most of the fun part of the family is going (ie: the three cousins and their significant others that we were supposed to sit with at the wedding from hell over this past weekend.) It'll be one long weekend of running, waterskiing, and tubing, with a fair amount of drinking thrown in for good measure.
I usually don't really care much for Fourth of July. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for independence and whatnot, but I really think that adult men, alcoholic beverages, and explosive devices don't mix too well. (And no dear, you may not go buy any fireworks!) I really dislike the jackasses that think that the Fourth of July should be a weeklong celebration. There is no real logical explanation as to why people think that they need to fire off bottle rockets, Roman candles, and the worst of all... those damn screamin' Mimis for three or four days prior to the actual holiday.
Why is it that Fourth of July is the only holiday which prompts people to celebrate early? It's not like you see people opening gifts early at Christmas time (unless they're Jewish, but then that kinda takes the whole celebrating Christmas thing out of the equation and thus doesn't really qualify as celebrating early), or going door to door trick or treating a week before Halloween...although, if I had kids coming to my door asking for candy and wearing costumes a week early I'd probably give them candy anyway as a reward for showing good initiative.
I'm all for well done, professionally orchestrated fireworks displays. I figure the odds of someone who I know losing a finger, or eye, or both are probably pretty low if we're stationed three or four hundred yards or more from the actual site of ignition. Now, if I could just convince the neighbors that dry grass in the backyard is not a good site to launch their display from...