Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Not like the “Fourth of July” or “Cinco de Mayo,” for example.

But that’s what Dec. 2 is, here in the United Arab Emirates.

Their Fourth of July.

And we’ve just been out on the town, using our Wednesday off-night, seeing what the Second of December is about.

This country is only 38 years old, as of today.

It was on Dec. 2, 1971, kids, that Sheikh Zayed (the George Washington of the UAE) and five other leaders of local emirates signed an agreement binding them in a federation. The birth of a country, that is. This came after the British, who had provided military defense to the region for a century-plus,  warned the Sheikhdoms that they wouldn’t be patrolling the Gulf, and that they were on their own.

So they got together and formed a country (adding a seventh emirate a couple of months later). And now the UAE is fairly well-known, globally, and fairly seriously wealthy, and proud of itself, too.

So, yeah, big day. Though it is just a teensy bit weird to celebrate a nation’s history … when 80-85 percent of the people actually living and working in that nation … aren’t natives. Aren’t citizens, either.

Anyway, what you do to celebrate National Day (as it is known here) is, apparently, this:

—You decorate your car. Normally, the UAE has some sort of law against “changing the appearance” of your car. I think that means you can’t create a low-rider or some 10-foot-high monster truck, for example. Or get some really ridiculous rims. Maybe metallic paints are out, too; don’t recall seeing any.

But for National Day, a few days before and after, you can decorate your car with nationalistic stuff, as a colleague at the newspaper did (linked, above). For the Emiratis (the local Arabs, the citizens), that seems mostly to be about covering your windows with portraits of various important sheikhs, as well as red, green and white stars (the flag is red, green, white and black) … and attaching a couple of flags to your windows. You know, like the Lakers flags fans in Los Angeles fly on their cars. (Note: People inside the cars can see out, through the decorations. You just can’t see in.)

–You cruise around in your pimped-out ride, blowing your horn. I have read that young men like to race their cars around the capital (that would be Abu Dhabi) on National Day, but I haven’t seen that, and it’s now after midnight here,  so we’re running out of time to turn the local streets into drag strips. Basically, the roads here usually are too crowded to do anything but race from one red light to the next. That is, about 200 yards at a time.

–You walk up to the Corniche (the road on the Gulf), and stroll through the park-like area next to the water, and wait for fireworks.

Some years, apparently they have really cool stuff. This year … pretty much a dud. We made the trek up there with our friend Nancy Beth … and the best part of the 45-minute walk was looking at all the decorated cars, and the kids standing up through sun roofs, spraying other cars with Silly String. They were having fun.

But traffic was nearly at a standstill. It was sort of like a giant “cruising” scene from 1950s/1960s America, with people in the cars checking out the people on the sidewalk, and vice versa. Except without the sexual tension. Because there are so few women in the country (one stat I’ve seen is that the UAE population skews 70-30 male) and because they aren’t exactly flirting. This is a fairly conservative Muslim state, remember?

So we got to the Corniche, and headed west, to get closer to what we understood would be the originating point for what was alleged to be a gigantic fireworks display. Scheduled for 8:30. At 8:15, we and tens of thousands of our closest UAE friends (almost all of them expats from the subcontinent) … were pressed together on the Corniche, staring at the ultra-posh Emirates Palace across the water … waiting for the fireworks.

And waiting. And waiting. That 8:30 p.m. start? Not happening.

Well, maybe 8:45? Nope.  Or 9? Uh-uh. They have to do this eventually, right?

Having stood shoulder to shoulder, for an hour, with hundreds of guys on a piece of high ground, we gave up. We surrendered what we thought would be a prime viewing spot to go over and sit on an empty patch of grass. Just to get off our feet. Ahhh. Much nicer.

By now,  some people were leaving. But we decided the authorities had to fire off something. So we waited some more.

Finally, at 9:32, 62 minutes late … the fireworks began. And they were not worth the wait. Claims about assaults on Guinness World Records for most fireworks detonated … no way. In theory, we were looking at a site, across the water, where several barges were going to be firing off stuff, but it all appeared to come from one spot. And it was kinda lame. Much of it not high enough to see over the heads of people standing in front of us. And the higher stuff, just pedestrian. About on par with a fireworks show U.S. baseball teams shoot off after a Friday night home game.

But this was National Day! It’s supposed to be sensational!

It wasn’t. We gave up after 20 minutes of nothing special. Then we had the walk back. We were just ahead of the traffic. Because others were voting with their feet,  and the roads just south of the beach were filling up rapidly. We couldn’t find a cab, so we just walked … and it wasn’t a killer.

The best part of the evening? The Indian restaurant across the street from our hotel was still open. Hopping, actually. And we sat down and drank about three liters of water … and had some papadam and nan bread, sweet lime soda and sweet lassi and chicken kurma and lamb vindaloo, and a co-worker joined us, and it was nice.

Actually, the weather was fine, too. This is one of those stunningly hot places that is really quite nice in the winter. It was maybe 75 degrees with a light breeze at 8 p.m. A perfect night to go for a long walk with the rest of the residents of the city.

And the fireworks didn’t work out, but the meal at Nihal did.

So, now we have done National Day. Next year, we will know what to expect. And what not to expect.