Having finally rounded up all the records and filled in all the blanks, I took a deep breath and efiled our tax returns. From that time forth, the United States Internal Revenue Service and the tax authorities of the State and City of New York would have a detailed picture of who Ann and I are with regard to getting and spending during 2021.

It was an occasion like New Year’s Eve – an end and a beginning, a moment to celebrate. It was not as much fun, though, as when people used to swarm the central Post Office of every town and city in America at a few minutes before midnight on April 15 to stuff their 1040 forms into overflowing mailboxes. It amounted to thousands of impromptu street fairs happening simultaneously. I knew an early filer who would go downtown on the fifteenth to watch and hang out. People chatted and laughed and some drank alcohol. It brought Americans together in a way that pressing the send key in isolation does not. That’s unfortunate. We are a disturbingly divided country; we need occasions of national unity, even if only to file tax returns.

This year, tax time coincides with Easter, Passover, and Ramadan, which are also events that have lost some of the unifying force they once had. Not that in the past everyone was religious, but there did seem to be less animosity toward faith.

For much of my life, when I went to church on Easter Sunday, I did not feel like I was out of step with the culture. In part, that was because I was worshipping in the company of privileged white people who were culturally dominant – so dominant, people of other faiths or no faith hardly registered in our consciousness. But that’s not the only reason.

Today, some twenty percent of Americans profess, sometimes brag, that they are “nons,” i.e., not affiliated with organized religion. And the number is growing. Also, a sizeable number of people – some of my family and friends among them – view religious faith as foolish and intellectually indefensible. That’s often because they think of Christianity as defined by right-wing politics and Christian nationalism. If I thought that was all there was to Christianity, I too would have opted for brunch and mimosas last Sunday. But that’s a subject for another time. This is about national holidays as creators and reflections of e pluribus unum.

I’ve been looking around for an annual observance that is widely shared with few quibbles by most Americans. Thanksgiving maybe, but Black Friday and consumerism take the edge off the uplifting Norman Rockwell vision. Independence Day is great fun; parades and Sousa and picnics are delightful. But the foundational story of redcoats and English colonists leaves out a lot. The Super Bowl draws enthusiastic participation by millions, but the violence of the sport and the corruption of the business makes it for many Americans either a guilty pleasure or no pleasure at all.

To be sure, these reservations are personal, but surely many people agree with me that as national holidays these events are compromised.

My candidate for best (first rate, at least) unqualified national holiday happened a few weeks ago. Americans of all political and religious views, socioeconomic levels, and ethnicity came together to celebrate in waves of intensity over a three-week period to watch the NCAA basketball tournament. I don’t know how big the audience was. Maybe it was smaller than I imagine. But I’m sure it was large. And it was as good an example of e pluribus unum as we ever enjoy except in response to one-off events such as 9/11 or VE Day.

The tournament was not, however, perfectly unifying; that would have required the scrappy, too-short Peacocks of St. Peter’s University to take the championship trophy home to Jersey City. Maybe next year St. Peter’s or some other little-known college will bring us completely together.