“Well since my family is Armenian there are like quite a lot of little beliefs that I have heard growing up from my mom or dad that they themselves probably got from their parents themselves. Like, let’s see an example of this is that when you dream about something black it means someone that you know or such is going to die. This happens because I believe the color black is just seen as like a color that attracts bad luck or bad omens in Armenia. Uhm and then another one that was also very common when I was growing up was like that when your palm itches it means you’re going to get money soon or like in the near. I guess these were just phrases that were passed down as tradition or something of the sort. I remember I used to always like when my grandma or my mom would tell me these stories because it made me think that Armenians were like the coolest people ever!”
The fact that cultures have such traditions make it important to see the superstitions that make people believe to have good or bad omens in life and it is interesting to see how devoted some people are to these beliefs.
Monthly Archives: May 2013
Red envelopes and Tang Yuan
“For Chinese New Year we would visit every member of our family and go to their houses and tell them merry…I mean happy Chinese New Year, and wish them a happy one and give the children of the families red envelopes with money inside them. This is based on Chinese tradition of New Year and it was kind of like wishing them good luck in the upcoming year. Also fifteen days later we would celebrate the lantern festival in which it is tradition to eat a dessert called Tang Yuan – this is glutinous rice flour – and this symbolizes the family togetherness. I liked all of these events because I guess I just related them to seeing my whole family come together and just good family times.”
Many families have these tradition in which they share money or give it to the children in order to make them more excited about the New Year or such family gatherings. Being able to be with family and share such special this is very important for many cultures.
Sweeping blessings out the door
“I remember growing up my mom would tell me that when you are sweeping the floor in your house, uhm you are not supposed to sweep you know the dirt, directly out the door, you are supposed to sweep it into a pile and pick it up with a damp paper towel or some cloth or something and put it in the trash because If you sweep out the door it will sweep out the blessings from your home. My mom learned it from elders in the village she is from.”
For many families it is very important to make sure that their homes are safe and sound and always blessed therefore there are all these traditions in which they have sort of rituals to make sure that no bad omens enter the house and only blessings enter. The homes are seen as this safety harbor that protects the children and overall the families therefore taking extra steps in order to make sure its safe becomes a very common part of folklore.
“Sana sana colita de rana”
“Well I remember that when I would get hurt as a young child my grandma and my family would always rub where I had gotten hurt or was in pain and say ,”Sana Sana colita de rana, si no Sana hoy, sanara mañana”. I think it’s almost like the placebo effect, I thought it was like a chant of magic, believing that it would like magically cure me. Now I do it to my younger siblings, or younger children in my family, because I think just the thought of being cured by magic or being reassured that everything is going to be okay tomorrow is very healing not only to the cut but to the spirit in a way.”
In Mexican folklore this is a very common thing to do to younger children, and it is important to realize how folklore comes in to make children feel better and how this idea of “having magic” is idealized in order to make sure the children have something to believe in. Many folklore stories were made and said particularly for the children in order to give them stories to hear or have explanations for the many things in life that happen that are not always in our reach of control.
Baseball white lines and peeing on bats
“Okay I got one: baseball, so basically it was self-inflicted but so when I was one I threw toy cars at my mom’s ankles like she was a catcher, then if she put on sesame street, I would go up to the TV and click the button until it went to baseball, and so like keep in mind this is before I could talk. Then as a child I would mainly read baseball stories or books, and then with my one friend we would always test each other on baseball trivia, well basically through all of this conditioning baseball became part of my culture. For example, I like hot dogs, seeds, hats, smell of freshly cut grass etc., because it all relates to baseball. My role models were baseball players like uhm David Eckstein. Also, my family really got around baseball cause of all the time that I forced them to spend spent at lessons or practices, teams, clubs, and all-starts etc. well you get the idea. To make it more obvious think of baseball as like my folklore or myths or history or whatever. So now we have many superstitions within this game like not stepping on the white lines and well (laughs hard) we pee on the bats.
The reason why we don’t step on the white lines is because it can be seen as an omen for bad luck, and well I think it derives from like the fact that if you step on them they might like erase and so it makes the foul line harder to see which is like bad. And the other one sounds so fucking weird so I don’t like to say it often, but anyways we pee on our bats when there is like a cold streak because it is supposed to get rid of the bad luck plus it’s a hell of a lot of fun to do!”
It is very interesting how to many people different things can seem as folklore or their culture to them such as baseball, and its important to acknowledge how important traditions are to people. Therefore the definition of folklore becomes a little bit ambiguous because it is something we cannot control but there are different things that constitute to different people’s folklore beliefs and therefore they may vary.