Celebrating “Greater Lebanon”

Why “Greater Lebanon” would be a much better national holiday than “Independence Day”

Lebanese flag hoisted near the site of one of Tripoli’s explosions

Yesterday, MP Bahia al Hariri made what many saw as a remarkable gesture: She “gave back” her salary as an MP for the last years to the people. We had a little twitter chat about this, I think it’s admirable and arguably the right thing to do, but it has all the grace of a rich co-worker standing in the middle of an office and declaring that she will give back her salary to the company and work for free, to the silent resentment of her less well-off colleagues who actually need their salaries.

But I digress. It is the backdrop of Ms. Hariri’s munificence, the “ceremony on the anniversary of the establishment of Greater Lebanon in 1920”, which really caught my attention. Forget for a moment how much of a mouthful it sounds; with some work, this could serve as a great alternative to Independence day as Lebanon’s main national holiday.

I have written before on why the concept of “independence” is silly in this day and age, but I also argued that the Lebanese still need a day to celebrate their country and raise their flag. The more I think about this “Greater Lebanon” day, the more appropriate I find it to be Lebanon’s big national holiday.

A better national Holiday

Conceptually, the establishment of Greater Lebanon, a moment in history where the Lebanese came together to build a country that is larger than their sects and tribes, is more worthy of celebration than Independence day, which can be thought of as an act of temporarily combining our forces to reject a “foreign” occupier, only to get back at each other’s throats once they’re gone.

“Greater Lebanon” can be seen as a process that requires constant improvement, constant striving and hard work to reach a more perfect union, as the Americans would say. “Independence” was something that happened some time ago that we either take for granted or dispute. It is about a state of affair that stopped existing, a negative, as opposed to a situation we need to celebrate, build on and improve each year, an aspirational positive.

Greater Lebanon is even a more practical holiday, which in its own way is symbolic. The Greater Lebanon declaration happened in the Summer, as opposed to the often stormy days when we celebrate Independence day. Summer is the season where most Lebanese come back from the diaspora to visit their motherland. Celebrating a national holiday in the summer assures that many Lebanese who live abroad (a majority of the Lebanese) can celebrate inside their country.

Summer is also the season when most Lebanese get married, which is fitting if we think of Greater Lebanon as a marriage of our country’s many parts.