I am very tired of people wishing me “Happy New Year.” I find it to be completely insensitive, and highly indicative of the kind of ethnocentrism that runs rampant in American society.  My cultural background does not lead me to acknowledge the typical calendar year, because my family bloodline can be traced back to ancient Sumeria, and also the Phoencian civilization, and also the Ixil tribe in Guatemala.  Therefore, my family celebrates our new year not by watching Dick Clarke or wearing ridiculous and humiliating hats, but by paying honor to the ritual sacrifice of virgins as a way of giving thanks to our Gods.

We have updated that ritual for modern times, of course; instead of sacrificing the virgins, we simply find a virgin and send her text messages reading “r u 4 REALZ?” We also hack into her MySpace account and redo the layouts, and also stand outside her front porch and hurl pieces of bologna at the front door.

But again, our year is different from a typical calendar year; we actually perform this ceremony once every seven of your days. It begins on the day that the Judeo-Christian calendar often refers to as “hump day.” I am usually forced to spend a lot of my non-work hours buying bologna and researching virgin residences since our “New Years” happens much more frequently than our heathen counterparts.  It has also forced me to ask my company’s I.T. department to remove the MySpace block from my work computer, although purely for religious reasons.

So the next time you wish “Happy New Year” to someone, please stop and ask yourself: are you imposing your cultural values on others?  And if so, what’s up with that?