This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Columbia Barnard chapter.
We reached out to Her Campus Mizzou to see how our holiday traditions on campus compared! Here are 3 traditions at each university:
Mizzou goes from a college town to a ghost town during the holidays, but there are a few traditions that us Tigers have every year!
1. The Magic Tree – This tree is located in downtown Columbia and it is completely covered in lights of all colors. It isn’t a traditional Christmas tree because the branches are physically wrapped entirely in lights! It is featured in almost every Mizzou student’s Instagram/Snapchat story whenever the holidays roll around.
2. Christmas in July – Columbia, Missouri might be full of a bunch of Scrooges because one of our most popular bars, Harpo’s, hosts a Christmas in July. More students dress up for this than they do for the actual Holiday season. There is a hired elf involved and even fake snow! It’s almost as popular as real Christmas!
3. Lots of Onesies – Mizzou students love a good chance to rock a onesie to the bars… or any ridiculous costume. Onesie season begins the second the temperature drops. The more ridiculous the onesie, the better.
While finals might be on the forefront of every Barnard & Columbia students’ minds, we celebrate the holidays a little bit!
1. College Walk Tree Lighting: From this Thursday, November 30, until whenever the lights disappear, College Walk is ablaze with warm, pretty lights, stretching from Broadway to Amsterdam avenues. It’s a sign the holidays are almost here and classes are almost over! It makes walking home from late classes a delight.
2. Primal Scream: With our classic Columbia Stress Culture, the Primal Scream is a little known event that is strange and relieving. At midnight on the Sunday before the week of finals, this year it’s the night of December 17, students all over campus scream for about five minutes. It sounds like the apocalypse and always scares tourists and passersby.
3. Holiday Dinner in John Jay: I always stumble upon the lovely dinner by accident, but it’s one of the rare occasions where they open all the seating of John Jay and have the famous table of desserts, filled with cookies and puddings galore. There’s nothing better than sitting by the fire and consuming as many decorated sugar cookies as possible.
