The Homecoming Queen’s Crown shimmers in the morning sun, Saturday, Oct. 18, Houston, Texas. | Raphael Fernandez/The Cougar
The only thing other nations love more than making fun of American culture is pretending we don’t have any. Homecoming proves them wrong.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines culture as “the distinctive ideas, customs, social behavior, products, or way of life of a particular nation, society, people or period.” The U.S. certainly fits all the criteria.
The problem is that American culture is so globalized that it has lost much of its “distinctive” identity.
T-shirts and jeans became staples of American fashion, but now people wear them worldwide. Fast food restaurants originated in Kansas, most blockbuster movies come out of Hollywood and entire music genres like rap and hip-hop were made in New York.
The U.S. developed sports like baseball, basketball and volleyball and many posts claiming Americans lack culture are typed on iPhones and shared on American-made social media apps.
American culture is world culture, but people often criticize it as too commercialized or credit it solely to immigrant communities within the U.S.
While capitalism and influences from around the world have shaped much of American culture, homecoming week shows Americans also have local traditions rooted in community rather than commercialism.
A century old tradition
Although several colleges claim to have invented homecoming, Baylor hosted an early homecoming celebration in 1909 to welcome alumni back to campus. Now, more than 100 years later, UH carries on this uniquely American tradition.
One hallmark of homecoming is crowning a homecoming king and queen, who march onto the field wearing giant homemade chrysanthemums. In true American fashion, students vote for the “royalty,” reflecting U.S. values of democracy and representative government.
What’s more American than electing a fake monarchy for a school popularity contest during a football game?
Tailgating is another American ritual that grew out of the country’s obsession with sports and cars. The first tailgate was just a small procession of horse-drawn carriages in 1891, where people ate sandwiches on the way to a Princeton-Yale game.
The automobile helped this tradition grow, and today’s tailgates are sprawling seas of RVs, grills and sound systems. Fans arrive hours early, turning the backs of their Ford F-150s into functional food trucks and feeding complete strangers in the shared spirit of the game.
People eat themselves sick on burgers and Philly cheesesteaks, everyone brings their dogs and someone gets into a fistfight after drinking too many Jack and Cokes.
While fans in other countries also socialize and drink before games, those gatherings often take place in bars or at home. Nothing comes close to the massive, outdoor event that is American tailgating, because nobody loves football, drinking and parking lots as much as we do. Tailgating has no corporate or foreign origin—just classic, homegrown trash-talking and fun.
The variety of events across individual campuses also captures the great American spirit. Every American college is united by its marching band, cheerleaders and football games, but UH’s bed races and Canstruction events differ from the University of Missouri’s enormous blood drives and the University of Miami’s Boat Burning ceremony.
Each college’s unique homecoming traditions reflect the United States’ incredible diversity and show that Americans don’t have just one culture. We have hundreds.
opinion@thedailycougar.com
