Ah, Australia Day. A day of celebration for all Australians. For barbecues, cricket, and indie music. For cheap beer, hooning, fireworks and flag waving. That one day with special significance for all Australians.

Assuming, of course, that you ‘grew here, not flew here’. Also assuming that you are of Anglo descent, probably criminal descent, and the day a ship rolled into Sydney with a bunch of outcasts that weren’t wanted in their own country is of significance to you.

It’s difficult to write an article criticising Australia Day without being branded ‘un-Australian’ by people who don’t really seem to know the significance of the day, and actually mean ‘unpatriotic’.

In fact, our recollection of the day could even do with a bit of clarity.

The 26th of January is not the day Australia was discovered. It’s now well established that Indigenous Australians can claim they beat Europeans by a good 50,000 years.

It’s not the day that Europeans discovered the country. The existence of Australia was known, but virtually ignored, since at least the early 1600s by the Dutch and Portuguese.

It’s not the day that the English finally decided to pay it some attention, with William Dampier exploring the coast in 1688. It also isn’t when Lieutenant James Cook decided the country was uninhabited, and claimed it for England in 1770.

Nor does it, as most people believe, mark the day when the First Fleet reached Botany Bay.

In fact, the 26th of January was the day that the British flag was planted in the Australian soil in the name of King George III. Captain Arthur Phillip had been bumming around the Sydney cove and Darling Harbour for a good two weeks at that point.

So that’s the day that we’re commemorating with a national holiday. An imperialistic, archaic throwback, that has little significance to our country today. Our ties to England are all but ignored these days, save for the occasional royal wedding (on the condition that there’s a nice backside to look at).

There aren’t many other countries that celebrate what is essentially an invasion. Most celebrate independence – the practice of standing alone, of building up, not the initial act of tearing down.

If we should be celebrating the birth of our nation, Australia Day should be on 29 March, to commemorate the first Australian federal election in 1901.

Interestingly, New Zealand was also claimed as part of the flag planting, and yet they celebrate their national holiday with Waitangi Day, the signing of their founding document.

At any rate, what should any of that matter? When the day is shouldn’t be the point. What’s important is Australia. We should celebrate the country. It’s the vibe of it. It’s a day off, a strange midweek public holiday (followed by the equally important holiday, Sickie Friday).

So while the actual date may be meaningless, celebrate what’s great about this country – the fact that we all came here, at some point, with some hope for a better life. That we can all wave a flag made in a poor Asian country, or eat Vegemite owned by an American company.

Celebrate the fact that you get the day off.

Just don’t think that the day belongs to only certain groups of people. Don’t exclude, don’t hate, don’t think you have more of a right than anyone else.

That sounds like something an invader would do, which is missing the point, isn’t it? If anything, it makes Australia Day seem strangely un-Australian.

Matt Smith is co-editor of upstart, and like all Australians, enjoys any decent excuse for a public holiday. He’s studying the Masters of Global Communications, and you can follow him on Twitter: @nightlightguy.