The College Fix

Everything is offensive to everybody, everywhere 

Over the past few years you may have seen the various demonstrations against Columbus Day popping up at colleges and universities across the country. College students love to hate Columbus, blaming him for a multitude of sins from genocide against Native Americans to the advancement of colonialist hegemony to the bad traffic backups at the I-76 interchange at rush hour. To that end, more and more schools and activist students are opting to abolish Columbus Day, replacing it instead with “Indigenous People’s Day.” (Because nothing screams “respect for Native Americans” more than lumping them in as a singular homologous unit.)

So long as we’re doing away with Columbus Day on campus, however, schools should consider obliterating these other unjust, imperialistic celebrations. If enough campuses do it, surely the rest of society will follow!

– Valentine’s Day. This holiday should be destroyed for any number of reasons. It’s unfair to single people and aromantics. It’s totally a consumerist capitalist holiday manufactured by greeting card companies and candy conglomerates. It often evokes imagery of a winged, fairy-like heart-angel, which could be a triggering for people with negative feelings about Christianity. All of those Valentine’s Day cards are wasteful of paper and other resources. Do we have to go on?

– Groundhog Day. Um, hello? This holiday is totally exploitative of animals. A groundhog shouldn’t have to check its shadow as part of some speciest racket in service to human beings. We should demand that all groundhogs be set free and be given back-pay remuneration in the form of unlimited berries and nuts for life. The sadistic film Groundhog Day, meanwhile, should be banned from campuses forever.

– Fat Tuesday. Aside from being associated with the colonialist imperialistic religiously hegemonic Easter season, the title of this holiday itself is a moral travesty. “Fat” Tuesday? You might as well call it “Unrealistic Standards Body-Shaming Tuesday.” We should demand instead a holiday called “Body Positivity and Nonjudgmental Non-Standards Tuesday.”

– Father’s Day. Perhaps the most problematic and indefensible holiday in the history of Western Civilization, Father’s Day should immediately be abolished, and everyone who has ever celebrated it should be forced to publicly apologize and pay a fine. Father’s Day celebrates the patriarchy, which is really bad. Plus, given that gender is a social construct, “fathers” don’t even really exist. We should be celebrating “Gender Non-Determinative Holistic Caretaker’s Day” instead.

– Halloween. This holiday has way, way, way too many opportunities for people to culturally appropriate someone else’s heritage. Instead of dressing up in a costume, consider dressing up in a sackcloth and publicly atoning for your own privileged sins. It’s way more fun than going trick-or-treating!

MORE: Yes, the war on Christmas is alive and well at some universities

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