fandomhigh | Understanding American Holidays, Monday

For the first day of class, there was some patriotism going on. It was, admittedly, a little surly patriotism because modern America needed to get its shit together. But there was still a little. To explain the holiday, of course.

"Welcome to Understanding American Holidays. Where we... attempt to explain the strange things we do in this country," Tony said. "I'm Tony."

"And I'm Steve," said the blond wearing an extremely patriotic birthday hat. DUM-E had insisted and he didn't want the robot to feel bad. Shush. "Independence Day is tomorrow--the date we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, where America told Great Britain that we wanted to be our own nation, effective immediately."

Tony covered his mouth like he was trying to prevent his partner from hearing him say, "And Steve's birthday."

He was just doomed to being the most all-American to all-American.

"That's the history of the holiday. What that translates to these days is grilling outdoors and fireworks and drinking. You'll find that last one is just going to be a theme in holidays."

"At least this one doesn't require gifts or cards?" Steve offered. "There will, however, be a lot of people wearing red, white, and blue and yelling 'Murica!' while drinking."

The shouting might have been mostly directed at Steve, but he wanted to be thorough.

Tony nodded in agreement with that. "Hopefully there will be fireworks here tomorrow evening for anyone who has not experienced this holiday as of yet. If not on island, you'll definitely be able to see them coming from the city. But we're forgetting the traditional first class introductions, aren't we?"

"Let's go with names and your favorite holiday," Steve said, "even if you aren't from the US."

"We're cultural magpies in this country, we may end up stealing it anyway," Tony added with a grin. "Who wants to go first?"

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"I'm Gratuity Tucci," Tip said. "Um. I don't know about favorite? But in my world we have Smekday. It used to be Christmas but then the aliens took it over as a celebration of the day they conquered Earth but then we took it back as the day that we got them to leave again and my essay on the 'true meaning' of it won a national contest and got put into a time capsule."

A beat.

"So that was kinda cool."

"Very cool," Tony agreed, nodding along with that. "How did the traditions of the holiday change? Did they change at all?"

Also... heh. Smekday.

"I mean. Christmas is pretty hard to kill," Tip said. "But no, it's not really the same thing anymore. A lot of people's families got separated or — or broken. When the Boov attacked. There's still a lot of bitterness about it all. So there's still presents and I guess church for some people, but mostly it's a bunch of kind of vicious victory parades."

It was not an easy day to have a Boov best friend living with you, no.

"Fox News would disagree with that assessment of Christmas' safety," Tony replied dryly. "But that is different. Do you think it'll end up going back to how it was before?"

"I don't think anything's going to end up going back to how it was before." In fifty years there were going to be human "traditionalists" who claimed the Boov were invented as a liberal conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and Tip was going to be disgusted. But other than that, she was right. . . .

But clearly that was the truth. And Alex Jones is a beacon of hones--nope, can't even do it as a joke.

Can't even.

"The holiday or the people?"

Tip shrugged. "Both? The whole world was subject to imperialistic rule. Even the white people have figured out that's traumatizing and awful."

Yeah, Tony had to try stiffling a laugh at that. "Let's hope you're right."

"If I'm not I might have to give up on people completely," Tip said. She wasn't entirely joking. "Though at least we haven't had a presidential election where one of the candidates was a literal parrot yet."

The Boov were special.

"Well, now you've jinxed us."

"I guess other worlds have gotten a lot closer to that, huh," Tip mused. "Trump didn't run in my world. Honestly, he makes even Dan Landry look good. And he's a total poomp, pardon my language."

In Tip's world, "poomp" was extremely insulting.

But here it was sorta adorable!

"Trust me, if I do another civics class, I'll end up saying worse about the man."

"You guys might have preferred a literal parrot?"

Parrots were not known for their ability to tweet, for one.

"I would have preferred a potted plant be president over that man."

He was even tempted to say he'd take Doom over Trump. At least Doom understood politics. In his own... unique way.

Understanding American Holidays, Monday - 3rd Period

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