Students should delight in seasonal celebrations

Right about now is when I start thinking, “Ahhhhh, holiday
season.” Halloween has just passed, Thanksgiving is right
around the corner, and suddenly before you know it, it’s
Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, followed by New Year’s.

But really it’s “Ahhhhh” in a good way, and it
should be that way for everyone. These holidays seem to matter less
to some people the older they get, mainly because of a
“cool-and-jaded” phase many college students
undergo.

Holidays are something that should matter more as we get older.
Maybe you think Halloween is for 8-year-old trick-or-treaters,
Thanksgiving is for tracing your hand to make turkey drawings, and
Christmas is for little people who still believe in Santa and hang
up stockings. You are too cool for holidays, too blase for buying
into the trend, too jaded to give in to such conventional
consumer-aimed gimmicks.

I say that’s dumb.

There are a million excuses on every other non-festive day of
the year to be uneventful and boring. But what justification do you
have on a holiday when society as a whole makes it so easy to be
better than boring? To be (fasten your seat belts) fun?

If you’re one of those people who have a nonconformist
thing going on, and you’re trying to make some sort of
statement by being weird and creating and celebrating holidays on
non-holiday days, then fine. Hooray.

But if you’re one of those people who have a nonconformist
thing going on and you’re just figuring to boycott holidays,
take a look around. I’m sure at least half your peers
are thinking the exact same nonconformist thought.

Getting into the holiday spirit is important because the older
we get, the less our normal daily lives bear any resemblance to
what could be our holiday lives.

I mean, back when you were in elementary school, practically
everyday could be Halloween. If you had a thing for Batman and
dressed up in a Batman costume every single day, you’d just
be some weird little kid who always wore a Batman costume.

When you were little, every day might as well have been
Christmas; you were always stuffing yourself with cookies and candy
anyway. And school was pretty much fun all the time; there was
never really any work to do. As a result, the holidays were just a
more intense version of the fun times that constituted life.

But now look at your average non-holiday day, 10 or 15 years
later. Your work life looks like a scene from “Office
Space,” your school life looks like, well, not elementary
school.

As an adult, you have more societal obligations, more things to
worry about. And whether or not you pay attention to it, you
actually know about the nutritional value of eating four pounds of
cookies in one day.

This is where the beauty of the holiday comes in. Not that we
really need any more excuses to party, but holidays are lovely
occasions to make people bring presents or dress up in weird
costumes, or just nice non-grungy, ragged and stained clothes.

Think of all the fun things you can do with a whole turkey
(frozen or thawed), cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. Not to
mention eggnog, mistletoe, New Year’s revelry, corn, fruit,
and the fasting, dancing and singing involved with Kwanzaa. And if
you’re more into the solely-alcoholic kind of fun, bars
always have some sort of holiday drink specials.

Don’t wait until New Year’s to start something new.
Thanksgiving is fast approaching. You know you want to get festive,
and can you help it if it involves turkey, tryptophan and passing
out? Of course not. So stop cynically rolling your eyes, and take a
government-approved day to have a little holiday fun.