Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Kick up your heels at a shindig

How many of you plan to go to a shindig on July 4th and kick up your heels?

There's a lot of unintentional legwork in that question. Let's tackle both the word shindig and the phrase kick up your heels, and see if we can't wrestle them to the ground, slang-o-rama style.
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Shindig, meaning "dance, party, lively gathering," gets a nod from the Online Etymological Dictionary, which notes it first appeared in 1871. According to OED, this word probably evolved from shindy "a spree, merrymaking" (1821)—which also refers to "a game like hockey"—or perhaps from shinty, which is the name of a Scottish game akin to hockey (1771). Merriam-Webster says shindig first danced onto the scene in 1842.

Hmmmm. I sense some uncertainty as to when shindig first arrived on the scene.

I checked Google Ngram Viewer for early appearances, did a little digging, and found it in Across the Atlantic: Letters from France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and England by Charles H. Haeseler, dated 1868. The following passage appears in a passage describing a snowball fight in the Alps:

As for kick up one's heels, nowadays we pretty much use it in the sense defined by Merriam-Webster: to show sudden delight or have a lively time. However, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer, its original meaning was much less... ah... lively:

kick up one's heels: Enjoy oneself... This expression originated about 1600 with a totally different meaning, "to be killed."

Ee-ow!! Although, perhaps in these days (and nights) of COVID-19, kicking up one's heels at a big ol' shindig where folks are all jammed together might result in a condition that is closer to the original meaning of the phrase.

So, whatever you do to celebrate the 4th, please stay safe and err on the side of caution. As for me, I'm going to see if I have a red-white-and-blue mask to wear that day if I should venture out in public.... 

If you attend a shindig on the 4th, please add a little distance while you kick up your heels...
WikiArt - 4th of July 1819 in Philadelphia by John Lewis Krimmel