By Charles Hawley

If ever there was a day for Germany to cut loose and celebrate, today is the day. Fifteen years ago, on Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was transformed from a deadly authoritarian barrier into the scene of the country's biggest ever bashes. No longer would people be shot trying to cross the concrete barrier that divided the country for 28 years. The Wall, on that day a decade and a half ago, turned into the world's narrowest, most crowded dance floor.

So let's party! Let's dance! Let's see a repeat of perfect strangers hugging, kissing and drinking champagne together! It was Germany's finest hour and cries out for celebration. After all, this isn't some blip on the historical radar. An entire system of oppression collapsed 15 years ago today. And it happened here in Berlin.

Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash even goes so far as to say that the fall of the Berlin Wall ranks right up there in importance with the French Revolution. "The French Revolution altered the basic geography of Europe and so did the 1989 revolution," Garton Ash said in a recent interview with DER SPIEGEL. "Nov. 9, 1989, defines our contemporary history more fundamentally than the fall of the Twin Towers in New York."

And yet, if you do jump into your party get-up and make your way to the Brandenburg Gate tonight, you will likely be alone. Today, there will be no repeat of the 1989 euphoria. The euphoria is gone. It has been debated, talked, written and anguished away into a dark, unreachable corner. Reunified Germany, everyone seems to believe, is sick. The economy is sick. The social reforms are sick. Newspapers tell Germans how bad things are everyday; the tabloid Bild says the government's current reforms equate to state-mandated poverty, influential Die Zeit analyzes "the patient Germany." What, the country that invented the word weltschmerz seems to be asking, is there to celebrate?

"We are in a difficult situation economically and psychologically," says Hendrik Berth, a professor of psychology at the University of Dresden. "We are faced with social reform and unemployment. There is something of a crisis mood. And there is an intense discussion as to why we still don't have true union 15 years after the fall of the Wall. This all plays a roll in why the celebration is muted."

The Germans are good at this sort of thing. Just last week, German Finance Minister Hans Eichel proposed moving Reunification Day, a national holiday of low-key celebration and speeches (leave your flags at home, please) every Oct. 3 in honor of the 1990 rejoining of East and West Germany, to the first Sunday of October. His reasoning? The German economy can't afford the lost day of productivity and lost taxes the holiday brings with it. That's like cancelling the Fourth of July to keep banks open. Or getting rid of Bastille Day in France so the vintners can produce a few more bottles of wine. A huge brouhaha resulted and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder sheepishly withdrew the plan over the weekend. But can you imagine?

Give the country a reason to party, and they'll come up with a grocery list of reasons why a celebration isn't appropriate. And when reunification comes up, the list seems to be especially long. A number of them are, of course, valid. Unemployment for example; Germany's unemployment rate is 10.1 percent. In the West, though, it's only 8.2 percent. The East? 17.5 percent. People are fleeing the East en masse for better prospects in the West, leaving behind ghost towns in some areas. And recently, western Germans have begun to wonder aloud to what end over €1 trillion-worth of "solidarity payments" have been made to the East.

But highest on everyone's pet "reunification-has-failed" list seem to be the psychological differences. "They just aren't like we are," both sides say of the other. Easterners complain too much. Westerners are shallow and money-hungry. Easterners aren't grateful for all we've done for them. Westerners trample all over our East German cultural heritage. Blah, blah, blah. One in five Germans, according to a recent survey, thinks the Wall should be rebuilt.

The results of all this name calling have been twofold. The first goes by the German shorthand "Ostalgie" -- a by-now well-known combination of the German words for "East" and "nostalgia." Faced with so much rejection of their past by westerners, those from the East have developed a knee-jerk attachment to almost everything from former East Germany from cars to soap to horrific architecture. Some even seem to be forgetting the worst of the political oppression.

The second result is that westerners and easterners -- even those who were still schoolchildren when the Wall fell -- often tense up around each other. Have a party with both Eastern and Western Germans invited, and chances are it won't gel.

Oh yeah. And the third result: Instead of celebrating one of the most monumental and wonderful days of the past century with the parties it deserves, the main events in Berlin this Nov. 9 are a ceremonial wreath-laying event and a discussion panel with former Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Get over it. After all, things aren't all that bad in Germany. The country has one of the highest standards of living in the world -- Easterners included. Berlin, Germany's capital once again, is almost completely healed with shiny new buildings built atop what a decade and a half ago were landmine-strewn wastelands. And considering the incredible economic strain of inheriting an entire post-socialist basket case, Germany's economy isn't doing half bad.