While Americans are pleased with pleasant parties and family gatherings, wait 'til they get a dose of South American and European graduation celebrations.
As the showers of spring recede into the sunshine of summer, high schools and universities all over the world prepare for seniors to graduate. In the American eye, no graduation is complete without the big family meals, weepy grandparents and frantic house parties. For the rest of the world, the events preceding and following graduation are much more madcap and entertaining than anyone could imagine.
Take Argentina, for example. Argentinean graduations can literally happen at any time due to the fact that tests, presentations and projects don’t finish on standardized dates. However, the moment a student is deemed a graduate and receives a diploma, a glorious attack commences.
Following a student’s graduation, friends and family repeatedly pelt the student with a variety of squishy and wet items, such as ketchup, egg yolk, pepper and yogurt. After the student is bombarded until he or she is unrecognizable, more friends and family rush the lucky graduate and use scissors to shred the student’s clothes and trim the student’s hair, all as a sign of pride, endearment and respect.
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In Italy, a similar system is in place, although in addition to the pelting, friends and family also brandish humongous cutouts of extremely embarrassing pictures from the graduate's childhood years. While everyone is taking projectiles like champs, friends and families snap photos, hoping to be just close enough to be in the pictures with the lucky graduates.
If being a subject of pride, endearment and respect isn’t your cup of tea, perhaps you would enjoy the month-long parties of Norway. Instead of having class for the last month of school, Norwegian high school teachers basically give their students free reign to do whatever they want. Using this newfound freedom, graduating high schoolers use this opportunity to dress up in blue and red overalls (like Mario) and drink the days away.
Known as the russefeiring, near-graduates also spend those three weeks on an extreme bus design competition. Essentially, students spend tens of thousands of dollars to purchase a full bus and add beautiful patterns and tags all over the exterior of the large vehicle. Students also completely makeover the interior of the bus into a full on lounge, complete with comfy leather sofas. Graduating Norwegians then ride their artsy buses between the many parties they attend during the russefeiring.
Continuing this brand of European graduation funkiness, the Swedes also make sure high school graduations are events celebrated by entire communities rather than family and friends. During a normal Swedish graduation, the only dress code requirement present is that students need to wear white sailor hats. Despite the potential for options, nearly everyone is dressed in either a suit or a short white dress.
Following the ceremony, the graduated Swedes pile into the backs of large flatbed trucks and essentially try to make as much noise as possible as the trucks rush about all over town, using noise to make everyone notice the happy occasion. Afterward, students hop straight off the trucks to be received by a community that is frothing at the mouth to give gifts of flowers, balloons and stuffed animals.
Say what you will about the traditional American graduation, but these international celebrations do their utmost to put their American counterparts to shame. With that, I bid farewell to you, faithful readers, and congratulations to all near-graduates taking the time to look at this column!
Richard Hwang is a student at Athens High School. How does your family celebrate graduations? Email him at rhwang999@gmail.com.
