Get outside your home country for a bit, and you realize that just about no one cares about the “national day” your compatriots back home are celebrating.

Religious holidays cross borders. May Day crosses borders, especially in Europe. The Summer Solstice has some second-tier traction, here or there.

National holidays … not nearly as much.

The Fourth of July in Abu Dhabi?

Well, it was a Sunday. Which is the first day of the work week; like Monday in the West. It was warm, and it was muggy. Just like nearly every day has been for two months.

Nothing special.

The National newsroom has a few more Americans in it than it did a year ago, but by no means do we constitute a majority … or a plurality … and not even a critical mass.

So it seemed almost furtive as the Yanks came into the office and suggested “Happy Fourth!” to each other. Didn’t want to interrupt anyone else for whom it was just another workday. The Brits and Canadians and Indians and Pakistanis. To them, the Fourth of July is … the day after the Third of July.

In the U.S., we like to think that the world is aware of the Fourth … but having spent four or five Fourth of Julys outside the country now, in a variety of countries … I can tell you that it goes unnoticed unless the country you’re in has some significant number of Americans. Like, say, South Korea or Iraq, where we have tens of thousands of men in uniform. Enough to make some noise or at least prompt taverns and restaurants to put on specials aimed at Yanks. Burgers and dogs, maybe.

Test your knowledge of the “national day” for  some other countires you might know fairly well.

1. Ireland.

2. Mexico.

3. Canada.

4. France.

5. UAE.

How did you do? Here are the answers.

Ireland — St. Patrick’s Day, March 17

Mexico — Independence Day, Sept. 16 (not May 5)

Canada — Canada Day, July 1

France — Bastille Day, July 14

UAE — National Day, Dec. 3.

If you accurately answered more than one of those — St. Patrick’s Day/Ireland … consider yourself “worldly.”

The point being, outside your own borders, few of us, anywhere in the world, pay much attention to other nation’s Big Day.

So, our Fourth here was quite limp. One Yank was asked “what would you be doing at home?” and I piped up “blowing up stuff!”, thinking more of my youth than recent history. And the Yank to whom the question was directed answered, “Barbecuing in the backyard. Maybe watching a ballgame.”

None of that is possible here. The Fourth, a Sunday, a workday, so we’re not at homes. Hotdogs are hard to find. Grilling in 110-degree heat is crazy. No fireworks on sale, not that they’re legal anyway. All of us working.

I made a half-hearted attempt to have a couple of the Yanks come over to the apartment to wet their whistles, after the work day … but no one seemed keen on it and that was that.

I didn’t give up completely, however. While sitting on the couch playing solitaire on my laptop, I played a series of John Phillip Souza marches on YouTube. “Stars and Stripes Forever,” indeed. Just turns out that they don’t travel really well.