Twilight sighed as she walked down the street towards Sugarcube Corner. Despite the fact that Pinkie Pie was an earth pony, she figured that she was one of the ponies least likely to be involved in something like this, second only to Fluttershy, and if Fluttershy's Nightmare Night behavior was any indication, she wouldn't even want to come out of her house. Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, seemed like the type of pony who would love this particular holiday, so that left Pinkie Pie to give a little more perspective as to what was going on.
Twilight pushed the door of the confectionery open, and was greeted with the sight of Mr. and Mrs. Cake standing behind the counter, organizing a fresh batch of cupcakes in the display case. They looked up from their work when they saw Twilight walk in and both raised an eyebrow.
"Not every Cleansing Day when we get a horn jabber in here," said Mr. Cake. "What, you want to see how we lowly earth ponies live?"
Twilight shook her head and walked up to the counter. Seeing as she was here, she might as well try to get something for her and Spike since they were low on food. "Nope. I was... well, I wanted to talk to Pinkie."
"Oh, she's back in the kitchen," said Mrs. Cake, motioning back to the room in question. "You want me to call her?"
Twilight nodded. "Yeah, and... I know this is a stupid question, but can I also get half a dozen cupcakes?"
"Of course you can, dearie." Mrs. Cake pulled a box out from under the table. She loaded half a dozen cupcakes into it and tied it up with string. "That'll be fifty bits."
Twilight's jaw dropped, and her eyes went as wide as dinner plates. "F-fifty bits?! The normal price for half a dozen cupcakes is fifteen bits!"
"Not today for stick heads," said Mr. Cake with a frown. "I mean, you can afford it, can't you? All you stuck-ups are rolling in money while us earth ponies are barely scraping by. I know you hold on to your bits until the Celestia on the bit screams, but you can let go of a few more bits. You can afford it."
Twilight closed her eyes with a sight. Right. Cleansing Day. They don't really mean it. She opened her eyes and gave the Cakes a fake glare. "Well, why would I pay fifty bits for cupcakes that filthy mud ponies made? That's probably what they're made of anyway!" Twilight scoffed and made a show of sticking her nose into the air. "You should let me make them. I'd do it with my magic a hundred times better and faster than you could ever imagine!"
Mrs. Cake raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?" She chuckled and turned to her husband. "Imagine that, Pumpkin: a stick head who actually volunteered to do a little hard, physical labor instead of some simple job with their magic."
"Making your cupcakes for you would be simple with my magic!" Twilight retorted, snapping her head back down to make eye contact with the Cakes again. "Anything you can possibly think of I can do better with my magic."
"So you admit that you're worthless without your horn?" Mr. Cake said with a smug smile.
Twilight turned her glare to him. "If a pony is worthless without a horn, what does that make you?"
Mrs. Cake began idly examining one of her hooves. "Smarter, more resourceful, dexterous with our hooves, stronger, and not as big-headed as you stick heads. I'd say that's a fair trade."
Twilight snorted, but didn't retort. She merely continued glaring at the Cakes, who smiled at her for a few seconds before Mrs. Cake began chuckling. "I've heard from Applejack that this is your first Cleansing Day. I must say that you're doing rather well." She widened her smile, and Twilight saw a little more warmth behind it. Mrs. Cake pushed the box closer to Twilight. "Fifteen bits as usual, of course."
Twilight returned Mrs. Cake's smile and put the bits on the counter. "Thanks, I guess."
Mr. Cake frowned and cocked his head a few centimeters. "You do know that we didn't mean a word of it, right?"
Twilight smiled reassuringly at the couple and nodded. "Of course I know that. It's just that I found out about this day the hard way, so it's a little different getting used to the idea. That's all. I know that you would never say that and actually mean it."
Mr. Cake's smile returned "I'm glad to hear that, Twilight. Now, you wanted to talk to Pinkie?"
Twilight nodded as she remembered why she had come to Sugarcube Corner in the first place. Mrs. Cake returned her nod and went back into the kitchen to retrieve Pinkie Pie, and within a few moments the pony in question came hopping out of the kitchen, dotted in clumps of flour. Her face split into a wider grin when she saw Twilight.
"Hey! It's one of my favorite unicorn supremacists in the whole wide world!" Twilight bit the inside of her lip as Pinkie bounced over the counter and wrapped her in a hug. "You wanted to talk?"
"Uh... yeah," Twilight replied.
"Okay." Pinkie Pie turned her head to the Cakes. "I'm gonna take my lunch break now, okay?" The two grunted in affirmation, and Pinkie led Twilight to a corner booth of the shop and had her sit down. Pinkie made a brief detour to get a tray of cupcakes and a pair of sodas, and placed them on the table before sitting opposite Twilight. "So, what did you want to talk about?"
Twilight took a deep breath, and levitated one of the cupcakes over to her. She took a bite and relished the sugar rush that went through her, and chewing the cupcake gave her time to formulate what she wanted to say. She swallowed her bite and took another deep breath. "Pinkie Pie. Am... am I a racist?"
Pinkie Pie nodded as she took a cupcake off of the tray. "Uh-huh."
Twilight's jaw dropped, and her concentration nearly broke to the point where she dropped her cupcake. "P-Pinkie, how could you say that?!"
Pinkie shrugged. "Well, you asked, didn't you?" Pinkie cocked her head. "This is about today, isn't it?"
"Of course."
"Okay, then, what about today makes you come to me, a supposed worthless mud pony, and ask me if you were a racist?" Pinkie leaned back in her chair and crossed her forelegs. "Something had to make you think all of that."
"Well yeah..." Twilight uneasily scratched the back of her neck. "I just... I dunno, I guess... I guess I'm just worried about how easily these slurs that I'm slinging at you guys are coming to me. I don't have to even think about it before extolling the virtues of my horn over your complete lack of one."
Pinkie shrugged. "Well, it's not as though Mr. and Mrs. Cake had any more difficulty. Besides, I know you didn't mean it. You two smiled about it afterwards, right?"
"Yeah."
"Exactly." Pinkie Pie smiled at Twilight and glanced back at the Cakes. "Don't get me wrong, I don't think you're racist in the sense that you think unicorns are the master race or anything like that, I just think that you lean more towards unicorns because it's what you're familiar with. You don't know what it's like being anything else, so you prefer to stick with the familiar."
"Well, I don't hate other races, Pinkie."
"I know that," said Pinkie with a wave of her hoof, "but if I gave you the opportunity, right here and right now, to turn you into an earth pony forever, would you take it?"
Twilight bit her lip and shifted in her seat, averting her eyes. "Well..."
Pinkie put a a hoof on Twilight's shoulder. "It's nothing against you, Twilight, it's just that it's familiar. You like being a unicorn. You don't know how to be anything else. If you could go back to the moment of your birth, you'd choose to be a unicorn, right?" Twilight's ears flattened, but Pinkie gave her a reassuring pat. "It's not a bad thing, Twilight."
Twilight frowned and tilted her head. "That doesn't make me a bad pony?"
Pinkie giggled and shook her head. "Of course not, silly. We all do it. Applejack would choose to be an earth pony again because she could keep her natural connection to the earth, and that would help her farm. Fluttershy and Rainbow would become pegasi again because they like their connection to the sky. We're all biased towards our own race, and that's what today is really all about."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, Applejack told you the history of today, right?" Twilight nodded. "Right, so you know that ponies took that feeling of the familiar and actually thought that it meant that they were better. All three of the races did, and it came out in really bad ways." Pinkie's smile faded and she flattened her ears. "Ponies said and did a lot of bad stuff to each other back then." Pinkie's ears perked back up. "So that's what today is about: getting those bad feelings out in the open so we can see how silly they are." Pinkie giggled and winked at Twilight. "Giggling at the Ghosties, if you will."
Despite herself, Twilight cracked a small smile. "Interesting. But doesn't that kind of show how everypony feels? Like a "drunken words are sober thoughts" kind of thing?"
"Er... not exactly. At first, maybe, but once we all started laughing, I think we realized how silly those words really were." Pinkie giggled. "You don't really have a stick on your head."
Twilight frowned. "I'm not sure I totally get it still."
"Words only have the power we give them, Twilight, and if we laugh at those words that are supposed to be mean to other ponies, they don't have that power." Pinkie tapped her lower jaw with her hoof, and looked down to the remaining cupcake on the tray. "It's like if we all decided that the word cupcake was a bad word, would it be a bad word?"
Twilight scratched her head and looked down at the cupcake. "Well... I guess it would be. I mean... hmm."
Pinkie's smile widened, and she leaned forward. "Whatcha thinkin'?"
"We gave the word cupcake negative power, so... it has it. If we all then decided that it didn't, that it went back to meaning a cake in a cup, then the power of those words is gone."
"I think you got iiiiit," said Pinkie in a sing-song voice. "We do this so that words like that don't make ponies feel bad anymore."
"So then why don't we say that kind of thing the rest of the year?" Twilight questioned. "If a day like today gets those bad feelings out into the open, then why don't we say them all the time?"
"Would you like to be called a stick head every day?"
Twilight's brow creased, and she crossed her forelegs. "So it doesn't work? Those words still have power at the end of the day?"
Pinkie Pie's wide smile faded, and it turned a little wistful. "Some words have a lot of power, Twilight. Saying what we do, yeah, it's still technically racist, and honestly, you can only laugh at that for so long." Pinkie Pie's smile widened ever so slightly. "But that's what today is. It's us all getting together to forget that those words have power. We all use them to laugh at how silly we are for letting them have any power." Pinkie shrugged. "A lot of power of those words is gone because of today, but you still wouldn't want to hear it in casual conversation, right? You'd rather be referred to by your name, and not categorized by your race, right? I mean, even if you weren't offended by the phrase stick head at all, would you rather be called that, or Twilight?"
"Well, Twilight, of course."
"Right, so that's why we only giggle at the power those words hold over us once a year. It gets tiresome otherwise." Pinkie giggled and took a bite of her cupcake. "Those words only hold the power that you let them, and today we don't let those words have any power. We giggle at how ridiculous it all is, and nopony has any ill feelings. If we actually used it as an excuse to be genuinely mean, I think we'd stop it." Pinkie finished off her cupcake and pushed the empty tray aside. "Have you talked to Rarity yet today?"
"Yeah."
"So you know that Sweetie Belle is involved in Cleansing Day too. Well, Sweetie Belle isn't allowed to say that stuff to ponies that she actually doesn't like, so there's no ill will at all. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom know she doesn't mean it, and they all laugh about it." Pinkie widened her smile and stood up. "I have to get back to work now, Twilight. Just think about it, okay?"