Labor Day is a glorious holiday because your child will be going back to school the next day.  It would have been called Independence Day, but that name was already taken.

Dodds’s quip treats Labor Day less as a celebration of workers than as a milestone in the family calendar: the end of summer break and the return of children to school. The joke hinges on a mock-heroic rebranding—calling it “Independence Day”—to suggest parents experience a renewed sense of freedom when school resumes. By adding “but that name was already taken,” the line punctures the exaggeration and ties the domestic “independence” to the already-established national holiday, underscoring how cultural holidays can accrue private, everyday meanings that differ from their official civic purpose.