Interviewer: Do you know of any traditions that are different in Greece compared to America?

AH: Yes one that is very different is how we celebrate Easter. It is a much bigger thing there, we take a whole week off and do a lot of different stuff. 

Interviewer: What else is different? How do you celebrate?

AH: We start by generally having dinner throughout the week with family and friends to celebrate all week. At these dinners we do a thing with eggs, where we have red boiled eggs, the red represents the blood of Christ, and at dinner, you smash your egg against those next to and see who’s breaks. If yours breaks you lose and you eat it but if you win you keep doing it until it breaks. Another thing is that at the church everyone gathers the night before Easter Sunday at the church and the church does a ceremony representing the resurrection of Christ and everyone goes crazy after. We celebrate that like how Americans do the fourth of July, with fireworks and stuff. 

Interviewer: Are these traditions special to Greece? 

AH: I’m not really sure, I thought everyone did it until I came to America and saw how differently easter is celebrated. But everyone in Greece does it this way. 

Interviewer: How do you feel about the different traditions of celebrating Easter?

AH: I prefer how we do it in Greece, it makes Easter feel more special and more important and it is something that is very fun.

Context: My informant is an eighteen-year-old student at USC. He was born in Athens, Greece and lived there his entire life until coming to Los Angeles for college. He is Catholic and has celebrated Easter every year of his life in Greece. This interview took place in person at Leavey library on USC’s campus. 

Analysis: This is a good example of how as people we view our traditions as very normal until seeing a group that in this instance celebrates the same thing with their own culture’s different traditions and customs. It also shows how Greece is a place that takes celebrating Easter perhaps more seriously than America, even though those who celebrate are celebrating something very important to their religion. I enjoyed hearing my informant explain something that I thought I knew all about, celebrating Easter, in a different fashion.