As someone who has helped run events, I do assume that “loud noises, firearms, and occupying streets without a permit are illegal” probably accounts for a lot of it. Maybe also “people have other means of advertising available,” if military, political, or store advertising did a lot to prop up the industries surrounding this.
But here’s another one I thought of: Taking weekends off wasn’t really standardized in the US until about 1940. When were vacation days standardized? Is it possible that in the absence of a strictly standardized set of days you have off, this becomes a great excuse to take a day off, and that this partially accounted for their size and grandeur?
Maybe people had big celebrations, in part to give a sufficiently strong informal mark of social validation to something being a “holiday?” Only nowadays, that doesn’t get you anything much.
(Fortunately, I think this one is easy to test: If these parades were usually on Sundays, I think this doesn’t hold up as an explanation.)
As someone who has helped run events, I do assume that “loud noises, firearms, and occupying streets without a permit are illegal” probably accounts for a lot of it. Maybe also “people have other means of advertising available,” if military, political, or store advertising did a lot to prop up the industries surrounding this.
But here’s another one I thought of: Taking weekends off wasn’t really standardized in the US until about 1940. When were vacation days standardized? Is it possible that in the absence of a strictly standardized set of days you have off, this becomes a great excuse to take a day off, and that this partially accounted for their size and grandeur?
Maybe people had big celebrations, in part to give a sufficiently strong informal mark of social validation to something being a “holiday?” Only nowadays, that doesn’t get you anything much.
(Fortunately, I think this one is easy to test: If these parades were usually on Sundays, I think this doesn’t hold up as an explanation.)