Academic Calendar Unfairly Privileges Saturnalia Worshippers

In "Understanding Christian privilege: Managing the tensions of spiritual plurality," published in About Campus, Tricia Seifert argues that Christian students benefit from "Christian privilege," defined as "the conscious and subconscious advantages often afforded the Christian faith in America's colleges and universities." Now, I have not actually read the article, since I cannot find it available for free on the web--fight the power, man!--but I've read the description of her argument in Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle describes one of her arguments: "The design of the academic calendar is perhaps the most obvious example of this phenomenon, according to Ms. Seifert. It is no coincidence, she writes, that campuses shut down just in time for the Christmas holiday, leaving non-Christian students forced to 'negotiate conflicts between their studies and their spiritual observances.' In some years, for instance, the Muslim holiday of Ramadan coincides with many campuses' week of midterm exams."

To the best of my knowledge, however, Seifert does not single out perhaps the most obvious beneficiary of these academic calendar policies: Saturnalia worshippers. Are you telling me that it is "coincidence" that campuses shut down in December, just in time for students to engage in pagan saturnalia orgies? I think not. Why is there so much rampant sex on college campuses? Is it not because we treat the non-Saturnalia worshipper as a second class citizen? As wikipedia remarks, "During Saturnalia ... there was drinking, gambling, and singing, and even public nudity." Spring break, anyone? Our entire academic system is implicitly structured to encourage students to worship the Roman pantheon!

So, how do we encourage non-Saturnalia worshippers to exercise their beliefs in non-Saturn? The problem is that the Saturnalia season is so much a part of our culture that we cannot escape it. So, let's take a lesson from the early Christians: when the pagans around them were all like, "Ho, praise to Saturn!" and "Rock on, December 25th, birthday of the unconquered sun," Christians said, "Okay, I'm going to celebrate your little 'December 25th holiday,' but instead of calling it 'Dies Natalis Solis Invicti,' I'm simply going to call it 'The birthday of Jesus, who, by the way, kicked your god's butt.'" To put it another way, perhaps one can find a way to accomodate the religious system to work around the calendar which the culture is already observing--maybe make December 25th "National Jesus appeared to Mohammed in a vision and said 'My Disciples got it Wrong' Day," or for the less religious hedonist, perhaps "The first time Epicurus got laid day."