National day
Importance attached to the national day as well as the degree to which it is celebrated vary greatly from country to country. For example, Spain's national day Fiesta Nacional de España is held on 12 October, the day celebrated in other countries as Columbus Day or "Día de la Raza", and commemorates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. A military parade is held in Madrid celebrating the occasion. The national day in France is 14 July and known as the "Fête nationale" (known in English-speaking countries as Bastille Day) commemorating the Storming of the Bastille, which is considered the start of the French Revolution. It is widely celebrated and the French Tricolour is much in evidence, while the President of the Republic attends a military parade on the Champs-Élysées of Paris. In the United States, the Independence Day celebrations on 4 July are widely celebrated with parades, fireworks, picnics and barbecues. In Ireland, Saint Patrick's Day, 17 March, is the equivalent of a national day and has been a public holiday for many years. However, in the United Kingdom the constituent countries' patron saints' days are low-key affairs. In recent times campaigns have commenced to promote the national days of England, Scotland and Wales, with St. Andrew's Day being designated as an official bank holiday when the Scottish Parliament passed the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Act 2007. A National Day for the United Kingdom has also been proposed in recent years.
Freedom fries
In the March 15, 2003 episode of "Saturday Night Live", Tina Fey reported this on the satirical "Weekend Update": "In a related story, in France, American cheese is now referred to as 'idiot cheese'." The 2006 documentary "Freedom Fries: And Other Stupidity We'll Have to Explain to Our Grandchildren" directed by Carl Christman took a comedic viewpoint on American consumerism and patriotism. In the episode "Stan Knows Best" of "American Dad!", after being asked how his French toast is, the main character Stan remarks: "Smelly and ungrateful! But this American toast is delicious." In the comic strip "Doonesbury", the characters Mark Slackmeyer and Zonker Harris criticized the name change in French. Slackmeyer said that, translated, the U.S. liberated France in World War II; and that many French newspaper headlines after 9/11 were "We are all American". At the end, he states that the anti-French were "jingoistic, self-regarding conquer-monkeys!" The French American indie band Freedom Fry chose their name based on the Freedom Fries phenomenon. In 2005, Robert Plant and his band Strange Sensation released the album "Mighty ReArranger", which contains the track '"Freedom Fries", an anti-war song whose lyrics contains the words "Freedom fries and burns and scars, the liberator goes too far".