It may be something of an exaggeration to say that life is returning back to normal at George Mason after the giddy excitement of Homecoming Week.  Maybe last week wasn’t quite as monumental as we sometimes make it out to be.  Yet even so, something is obviously different a week later.  There are no makeshift pirates or cowboys wandering the hallways, our decorations have been taken down, we won the football game, Daniel and Anna were crowned King and Queen, and the dance had a huge turnout.  So…now what?

Homecoming Week seems to have this effect every year.  For a brief time, our wacky sides are encouraged and, remarkably, school can actually be quite enjoyable.  Maybe the mere thought of seeing everyone wearing an utterly ridiculous superhero costume or screaming “V-I-C-T-O-R-Y” at the pep rally is enough to make us momentarily forget about looking cool and getting good grades.  Maybe it is enough to get us to concentrate on just having some good fun with the people we spend each and every school day with.

And then, as quickly as it began, the week is over; we are once again plain old students with homework and tests, desperately looking forward to 3 p.m., Friday afternoon, when we can finally leave for two days (or sometimes three, thanks to Columbus and Martin Luther King!).  We all have our own friends and activities, and school is usually pushed to the back of our minds for as long as possible.  Undoubtedly, you would receive quite a few puzzled glances if you were to boldly announce that you were excited to come back to school next week.  On Homecoming Week, however, it’s only natural to throw yourself into school spirit and thoroughly enjoy it.  

But what exactly is Homecoming Week about, really?  Well, according to Wikipedia (everyone’s favorite source), “the first ever homecoming was born at Mizzou in 1911, when the MU football coach and Director of Athletics, Chester Brewer, invited alumni to “come home” to Columbia for the annual football game against the University of Kansas.”  Since then, schools and universities around the country have adopted the event, usually adding a Spirit Week, pep rally, and dance to the football game, just as we have at George Mason.  We enjoy it because it is a tradition and because our modern American society really has so few traditions left that actually mean anything.  At George Mason, which most of us can identify with nearly as well as with our state or even our country (where do you spend most of your time, after all?), we have traditions like Homecoming Week to make us somehow feel connected.  It is good to know that this week of fun will continue each October after we graduate, and that the alumni who came back this year can remember their own years of school spirit. 

Homecoming is not like Thanksgiving or Christmas, however.  Its meaning can’t easily be explained, nor should anyone try to do so – dressing up as Disney characters, racing “Big Heads” made out of laundry baskets, having shouting contests, and choosing school “royalty” doesn’t exactly make much sense.  Perhaps we just do all of this because we always have, and, in however insignificant a way, it has become part of who we are.   Homecoming is quite simply a tradition; it’s an American tradition and a GM tradition, and we each participate because it has now become our tradition forever more.