Author Archives: sgcampbe

Greek Easter

A is an 18-year-old woman. She is currently studying Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. She considers her nationality to be American, but more specifically she is one quarter Greek Cypriote, one quarter German and half Argentinian. that being said, she strongly identifies with her Greek roots. She is fluent in both English and Greek, and is currently learning Mandarin.

A: I have a fun Easter family tradition.

Me: Yeah?

A: It’s kind of Greek Easter thing, but after you paint the eggs you put them in the refrigerator, and after you have Easter dinner, everybody pulls out the eggs, they’re all different colors, you choose an egg of your favorite color, and then you fight each other’s eggs. So you like, you’ll each have an egg and then you like crack it, and whichever egg cracks, loses. And like you do this with different family members until at the end one person is left with an un-cracked egg.

Me: Do they win something?

A: They win like god luck for Easter.

Me: So you pick the one that you painted? Or does someone paint all of the eggs and you choose from those?

A: For me it was always like somebody painted all of them and you picked the one that you want, which for me, I always tried to pick the coldest egg, ’cause it was like the hardest egg. Yeah. I won a lot them when I was younger. So, yeah, that was fun.

A talks about a family tradition which they do every year on Greek Easter. She has fond memories of the tradition as she won many times growing up, also because she laughed and smiled a lot in her interview. Though she does not live in Greece, or more specifically Cyprus, where her grandparents live, she still celebrates the Greek traditions that have been passed down though her family.

Mother’s Day and Lilac Festival

M is a 20-year-old black woman. She is currently double majoring in NGO’s and Social Change and Communications at the University of Southern California. M grew up in Boston, MA but currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. M primarily speaks English, but she is also fluent in Spanish.

M: My mom always gets the day off and we always go to the Lilac Festival on Mother’s day, ’cause it happens at the same time.

Me: Aww.

M: It’s like, we have the Arboretum in Boston, and there’s like, all these lilacs get planted and they all bloom like almost, like on command on Mother’s day. So, when we were kids, my dad would always take us to the Arboretum and give my mom the day to herself.

Me: But now your mom goes with you?

M: Hmm? Oh, yeah.

Mother’s day definitely means a good deal to M and her family. They have an annual tradition that they go to the Lilac Festival at the Arboretum in Boston every year to celebrate the day. Though the tradition has changed a small bit from giving their mother the day to herself to having he come long with them, it is still a good way to celebrate her and she still gets a nice day of relaxation. It is common to just send your mother a card and or gift to celebrate the day, but M and her siblings carry on the tradition of spending the day with their mom and showing her their appreciation by reserving the day for her, even after they have moved out.

Easter Egg Hunting with Siblings

M is a 20-year-old black female who is currently double majoring in NGO’s and Social Change and Communications at the University of Southern California. M grew up in Boston, MA but currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. M primarily speaks English, but she is also fluent in Spanish.

Me: Does your family have any fun holiday traditions?

M: Um. We are aggressive when it comes to Easter baskets. My mom is really happy that my brother aren’t home for Easter anymore because, I think she though she could like stop when I like reached 16, and she had the Easter baskets like out on the table, like you know, like we always do the hunt and then go to church, but she left them out on the table and we came downstairs and we were very upset and we told her she had to hide them, so she did, unfortunately very aggressively. And we didn’t even find them before church, so we had to go, we still didn’t have our baskets, and then it took us another hour and a half to find them when we got home. She was really annoyed. she was like, you’re ll adults you don’t need these, and my sister was…my sister to be fair was only 12, so she was like I am not an adult at all, like I want mine hidden. Then when my mom hid hers, my brother was like I’m only 14 and she was like ok. Then I was like, you can’t hide theirs and not mine. And then that’s when she was like, alright, these bitches… Yeah.

M talks about an annual family tradition of her mom hiding their Easter baskets and candy for her and her two siblings. Their mom thought that when they reached a certain age, that she could stop hiding the eggs, but the children all wanted to keep the tradition going. There was a sense of maturing and distancing from old childhood memories and games that the kids did not yet want to let go of, and so they continued the tradition until they moved out of the house. Not only was the Easter basket hunt fun for the kids, and kept their childhood spirit alive, but it was more time spent with siblings bonding and working together to find their baskets. They will likely carry on the tradition when they have children as it meant so much to them growing up.

Outside Clothes and Inside Clothes; Keep your House Clean

M is a 20-year-old black female. She is currently double majoring in NGO’s and Social Change and Communications at the University of Southern California. M grew up in Boston, MA but currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. M primarily speaks English, but she is also fluent in Spanish.

M: I’m really good at absorbing other people’s superstitions. My best friend from high school though that, ’cause she’s from Brazil, and her mother said like if you brought, like wore street clothes on your bed, that you would like bring like disorder to you life as well as to your bed because it was like dirty. Um, and so, like she would always like give me pajamas to wear like if I was to going to like, even if I wasn’t staying over, but like if I was goig to be at her house for a while or I had to do homework at her desk or like sit like on a beanbag chair like I was not allowed to like touch her bed unless I was like not in street clothes. She doesn’t either, like she does not sit on her bed unless she has taken off her jeans.

Me: Like you have to be in nice clothes or?

M: No, so like whatever you wore outside is dirty, so you have to wear stuff that you only wear inside, and so she like only wears her pajamas inside in the same way, like she would never go outside in sweatpants because then your not dirty clothes are dirty.

Me: That’s so much work though. To change every time you come home and leave.

M: I mean like, but if you grew up in it you just would never wear, like she also has like sweats that she would wear to the gym, and then she has pajamas.

Me: Ok.

M: And then her pajamas are meant for inside, and her sweats for the gym are meant for outside, as well as her other outside clothes.

Me: Alright, that makes more sense. But, so, do you do that? Or no?

M: No, that one is irritating. But I would always follow it when I was in her home ’cause obviously I didn’t want to be disrespectful but I, um, don’t think that I, like there’s so much disorder in my life already, a little more dirt is not going to change things. But there’s just a lot of things that I adapt into my life.

M describes an everyday cultural practice that she was introduced to by a friend who’s family follows it. The tradition seems to be specific to Brazil, but might be attributed to the culture of different nations as well. Unlike the Japanese tradition of not stepping on thresholds that she adopted and now follows still as an adult, she only follows this practice in the people’s homes who do follow the custom. It seems that M only adopts the cultural practice that she has learned when they could quite possibly effect the people around her in a negative way.

Adopted Japanese Custom

M is a 20-year-old black woman. She is currently double majoring in NGO’s and Social Change and Communications at the University of Southern California. M grew up in Boston, MA but currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. M primarily speaks English, but she is also fluent in Spanish.

M: I actually adopt everyone else’s superstitions. Like if someone’s like oh, like… Well there’s actually one.

Me: Ok.

M: So I went to a, like the Natural History Museum in Peabody which is outside of Boston which has like a remodeled traditional Japanese house from like the 1940’s, um, and when you walk through it like the guy always tells you not to step on the threshold because it like brings demons into the house, um, and for for whatever reason I’ve, it’s not that I believe in demons, but I also now refuse to step on thresholds of homes and it really irritates my family because when we are all coming home from the grocery store and we have to get into the house quickly I must step over (the threshold) and they’re like ‘can you not suck?’ But it’s only, it’s like the threshold of like the main door of the house, is like especially bad, but then also the threshold of any door is bad, but that’s also why like most, like sometimes in the old Japanese homes at least there were thresholds like built in to the doorways so like when we have doors now, there’s like, it’s just the floor, but in the traditional Japanese home there’s like a threshold, so like a bump under each door, and basically it’s similar to like “don’t step on a crack, break your mother’s back.”

Me:  So do you do that too then?

M: God no. That would be so hard. But it’s like the same thing, like you bring demons into your mother’s home and it’s bad, like demons are bad. But yeah, I don’t do it (step on thresholds) now.

It’s interesting how something learned during an educational endeavor, and something seemingly irrelevant to the informants life turned into a daily practice for her. Even though she is not connected to the culture that the custom hails from, nor does she believe in the superstition, that stepping on a threshold of a door would allow demons to enter someone’s house,  she adopted the practice anyway. Customs migrate so easily now, especially in the United States which is so culturally diverse as well as with the travel that people do. These practices travel so fast that some people who observe such customs do not even know the reasons and the history for why such traditions exist.