What is the point of "Rip Van Winkle"; is it just a funny story or is there something else going on?

Washington Irving's "Rip van Winkle" has become a story
that represents the Early American literary voice. One of the goals of Irving was to
give the new country of the United States,

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some of the same feeling of tradition that older
nations had because of their traditional
lore.

Therefore, Irving
modeled his story after German folk tales with which he had become familiar as a child
and as he traveled throughout Europe. To lend realism to his own legend, Irving
establishes at the beginning of his story that the tale "was found among the papers of
the late Diedrich Knickerbocker."

In addition to the
establishment of an American literary voice, Irving is credited by many with having
written the first short story. Also, like many Romantic writers, Irving recalls past
times with the setting of the American Revolution, expressing a certain nostalgia for
the "drowsy tranquility" and less "bustling" and "disputatious" times that differed from
those that followed the Revolution. Finally, there is the contribution of the folksy
humor in Irving's descriptions of the termagant wife, and a "mock-heroic" humor that is
not unlike that of Mark Twain.  All in all, "Rip van Winkle" is a story with a literary
objective behind it.