Author Archives: Sparrow Harrell

Eid Celebration

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“We do Ramadan, that’s like fasting sunrise to sunset. After Ramadan there’s Eid, but in my language it’s called Tabaski. Basically you fast for a little bit and you do the same prayer over and over again, to pray for all your sins, it will go on for hours sometimes. And then you sacrifice a lamb, cook it, and eat it. We go to a Muslim halal place and they’ll sacrifice the lamb for us and we’ll get the whole body and cook it. There’s two, the bigger eid is towards the end of the year. It changes every year, but the second eid is bigger, but I don’t remember the reason. It’s a whole party. My brother was born near Eid and so they had three full sized lambs for him and for eid. My grandpa actually breeds his own lamb every year and either kills the baby or the father. The lamb probably represents something, but I don’t really know, it’s just something we’ve always done. Eid is celebrating the end of Ramadan, it might also be some sort of anniversary but I don’t remember.” 

Context

Y is a 19-year-old college student from Denver, Colorado. Her parents were born in Dakar, Senegal, and her siblings lived there for a few years. Her parents speak Wolof, which is from Senegal. She and her family are Muslim, so they practice these holidays every year. She doesn’t really know the whole religious significance of them, but she knows they’re sacred and important. She mainly sees them as important holidays she spends with her family that mean a lot to them as physical representations of their faith and as a tradition their family does together every year.

Analysis

Eid and Ramadan are important holidays in the Islam religion. Eid specifically is marked with the ritual killing and eating of a lamb, so lamb is a very important food to eat at that time. The second Eid, which she says is called Korité, is a party marked by celebration. Analysis of this piece cannot actually get into the analysis of symbolism of the lamb and what the holidays mean in a religious sense, because the informant is actually a passive bearer of that knowledge. She is an active participant in the holiday and rituals because they are a family practice. Religion is interesting because people can be part of that faith and actively participate in the customs, without actually knowing all the reasoning and religious background for it. I think we may be seeing more of that in young people as religion becomes something that is culturally less important in America. Young people are less expected to be largely invested in religion, as American culture looks to science and reason instead of religion. Of course, religion is still hugely important in shaping America, especially Christian and Abrahamic religions. But in big cities, less and less young people are fully knowledgeable about religion. This doesn’t necessarily indicate a lack of faith though. Many people still believe in a God or a higher power, and try to live by that religion’s customs to their best extent without fully dedicating their whole life to religion. Y is an example of a young person who is able to hold on to their identity and faith as a Muslim, without knowing all of the religious specifics. Religious practices for her and many young people have become important because it’s something they do with their family and something their family finds to be very important, not out of absolute dedication to the religion.

Colorado Festivals of Dead “Frozen Dead Guy Day” and Coffin Races

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“The first is Frozen Dead Guy Day, it’s in Estes Park. This man, Bredo Morstoel, he died, and he was like “I want to be frozen and you can bring me back to life one day when you guys have that technology.” And they granted his wish and there’s a shed that has his cyro preserved body in it, so he’s a frozen dead guy. And so every year there’s an annual celebration called Frozen Dead Guy Day in Estes Park, where they celebrate and all hail the frozen dead guy that’s just chilling in the shed in town. So people take photos outside and have coffin races.

The coffin races are similar to Emma Crawford Coffin Races in Manitou Springs Colorado. Emma Crawford wanted to be buried alongside Pikes Peak, which is right outside Manatu. There was a horrible mudslide on a rainy day and her coffin comes tumbling down the mountain, down through town square. They’re like “No Emma your coffin!” She gets put back in the mountain, it’s fine. But now to honor her displaced coffin there are coffin races where everybody has to make a coffin and race their coffin down the side of the road against other coffins. People dress up super Halloweeny, super fun, same with Frozen Dead Guy Day, to celebrate the dead! To keep her body safe in the mountain so she doesn’t come sliding in town again you have to race your coffin, to appease Emma Crawford. I used to go to Emma Crawford Coffin Races every year and I would participate, we would sit on top of a hearst. We would dress up and hand out flyers for the haunted house I worked at. Everybody gets so into it and gets competitive about the best decorated coffin, what’s the best design for racing, who do you want to win, who has the silliest costume? The whole thing’s broadcast on the news. Afterwards I love to get myself some pumpkin pie ice cream. 

Context

Y is a 19-year-old college student from Denver, Colorado. She would visit the Emma Crawford Races every year with her family because they have family friends in Estes Park who they would visit and stay with and celebrate the festival. Her dad would also often take her to the Frozen Dead Guy Day celebrations. She remembers the Coffin Races fondly as fun celebrations that were around her favorite holiday, Halloween. She’s really interested in the gothic and macabre, so these festivals were favorites of hers.

Analysis

Both festivals have all of the elements of festivals. They are examples of festival time, when you operate by different rules than you usually would. Death and the macabre are usually avoided for Americans, they’re usually sad, upsetting taboo topics. However, during these festivals, people celebrate those things and make light of them. Emma Crawford Coffin Races occur in October, relating them to Halloween or Samhein. Lots of festivals surrounding the dead happen during this time period, like Day of the Dead, Halloween, or All Saints Day. This is related to the agricultural calendar, when things got colder and crops would start to die after harvest. These are Chthonic festivals and rituals, relating to returning to the earth. During the Coffin Races, people become comfortable with the idea of being in coffins and returning to the earth, something that is usually taboo. Both of these festivals are also the results of when proper burial rituals were done wrong. In the case of Frozen Dead Guy Day, he defied the usual expectations of burial rituals, and is actually attempting to defy death by coming back to life later on. The Emma Crawford Coffin Races are supposedly held to appease Emma’s spirit, because her resting place was disrespected and disrupted, so the festival must be held as a sort of apology for this disrespect and to celebrate her spirit. Both festivals also include lots of elements of performance. They follow a syntax, with the opening, the main event of coffin racing, celebrations such as eating, music, and drinking, maybe a costume contest near the middle, and then the closing celebrations. The big event of the coffin racing in both festivals is a symbolic event representing people making light and coming to terms with tough topics like their own mortality. There are performative acts like the costumes, and the racing. Costumes are also an example of the festival’s specific dress requirements. The festivals also have specific foods associated with them. Y says she loves to eat pumpkin pie ice cream after the Emma Crawford Coffin Races, with pumpkin being a food associated with Fall and Halloween time. These festivals are also community and identity building events for the towns. Both festivals are held in small towns that take great community pride in these events. These festivals have put these small towns on the map, and share town history and folklore stories that have stuck around in the community.

Beltane / Birthday Celebration

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“What Beltane actually is it’s like an old holiday, like Pagan but also Greek and Roman, it’s just an old holiday back when we were relying on crops cause it’s like the peak of spring, right in between the spring equinox and summer solstice. So what I do is I have a bowl of water that I place at the window at the start of the morning, and it collects the sun during the day and you put in your yellow flowers, or just any flowers you have to symbolize spring, and you can manifest over it. It’s an offering to the Mayday goddess, she’s not necessarily someone I follow, but I just like that it’s the same day as my birthday so I always do a little thing for it, a little offering. It’s more of like, a new beginnings thing, cause it’s actually the start of my next year of life. It’s sort of cleansing, I think in general spring is the time for that, new growth, birth and all that. A lot of people do fertility stuff, for me it’s just clean slate, new beginnings, on my birthday. I find it calming to have my own space, mediate, manifest, and go about my day.

Context

Y is a 19-year-old college student from Denver, Colorado. She started celebrating Beltane when she was in middle school, after she found out it was on the same day as her birthday. She doesn’t follow any pagan faith or celebrate any other Sabbats, so this celebration is both a Beltane ritual and more of a personal birthday ritual. She is actually of the Muslim faith, and says the ritual is technically a sin in her religion. She interprets the ritual and Beltane celebration more as a birthday cleansing ritual and as a quiet moment for her to calm herself before her birthday begins and reflect on what she wants in the year ahead.

Analysis

Beltane is one of the holidays that follows the agricultural calendar and also follows our life cycles, representing the cyclical calendar.. It happens on May 1st, during a time of great agricultural reproduction and the planting and growing of new crops. It also represents the time of budding youth in the life cycle. It’s similar to the saying of a May-December wedding, referring to when a young girl (in her May era) marries an old man (in his December era). May, spring, and Beltane are associated with new beginnings and growth in both the life cycle and agricultural cycle. This particular Beltane ritual especially represents new beginnings, as for Y it represents a new year of her life. The fact that she celebrates this holiday is very interesting because it illustrates an inter splicing of faiths. She is Muslim, and doesn’t usually celebrate the pagan holidays of the Sabbats. She chooses to celebrate this one because it’s on her birthday, which makes it also a birthday celebration. Birthday celebrations are one of the three big steps in life that are usually celebrated: birth, marriage, and death. Birthdays represent coming into a new identity, and are a time of liminality when a person is first becoming that new age. A lot of birthday celebrations are group celebrations, such as singing Happy Birthday together. Some people say that birthday parties started because the birthday, as a day of liminality, is a day when a person is more vulnerable to spirits, so groups would gather to protect the birthday person. Birthdays are also a time of private ritual though, many people have their own private rituals they do on the day to either reflect back on their life, or imagine the possibilities the new age will bring them. Y uses her birthday ritual to manifest good things into her life for the next year. This illustrates Dundes’ argument that the American worldview is very future centric. Instead of reflecting of the past, she looks forward to the future on her birthday. It is also an example of how American society looks at time linearly. Despite celebrating a festival like Beltane that uses cyclical time, her perspective of her birthday moving forward linearly is an example of her experiencing linear time. 

Theater Macbeth Superstition

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“Ok so I’ve been doing theater since I was a little kid. And I remember the first time I heard of this superstition, I was like, 7 I think. I was in my first musical and someone started talking about the M word. And I was like, “what’s the M word?” And they refused to tell me and I didn’t know why, and I thought they were like, talking about McDonalds or something. Cause we were backstage in the dressing room of the theater. So they tell me it’s a word we can’t say in the theater because it’s cursed and will make the play go bad, and that someone said it last year during the music and an actress fell of the stage and broke her leg. And when we get outside the theater when we leave, they tell me the word is Macbeth. And from then on I knew you weren’t supposed to say it. I was in a theater camp a few years later and I remember our teacher taught us about the curse. And one of the kids actually said Macbeth, and we all got so mad, and our teacher actually made him go outside to reverse it. He had to go outside the theater, spit over his left shoulder, and turn around three times. We all like followed him outside to watch him do it. Then I remember when I was in middle school I was in the musical, and someone said it. And we swear that’s why any mistake in the show happened. Like one of our lead actors was sick during the show, and we said it was because someone said the cursed word, we call it the Scottish Play while in the theater. So it’s a big superstition in theater, everyone knows about it. I feel like it became less important when I got older, but I still like actually believe in it. I’m not super superstitious or anything, but that’s the one that I’m really serious about. I don’t tell stories about it as much anymore, it’s not as sensational anymore, but I’m dead serious when people threaten to say it during a musical. I fully will not say it in a theater, even if it’s stupid. It’s kind of like a badge of being a real theater actor, like you’re really one of us because you won’t say it.” 

Context

B is an 18-year-old college student who lives in the Bay Area in California. She has been doing theater for almost all her life, and still considers it a big part of her identity. She relays the superstition with a bit of conflict, because while she sometimes thinks it’s a little silly and doesn’t really believe a single word can be cursed in a certain location, she still reveres the superstition and won’t actually say it. This is a theater superstition that has been around for a long time, and she’s heard it in theaters across many states in the US. 

Analysis

This is a magic superstition, where the belief is that if you do a particular thing, it will lead to bad luck. It is also combined with a conversion superstition, with the description of the actions that must be done to get rid of the bad luck. Superstitions like these are common in careers like theater, because live theater has so many elements that are out of people’s control. Once the show has begun, anything could go wrong and the actors have no way to control it. They could blank on a line, there could be a tech malfunction, there is a lot of anxiety surrounding life theater no matter how well they prepare. This means that there are a lot of superstitions, because it gives people an illusion of control that could act as a placebo effect. They can think “This show will go great, no one has said the Scottish Play yet!” It’s also an example of cognitive dissonance. When things go wrong in live theater and people don’t really know why, they like to have something to blame to give an explanation to the unexplainable. “Why did I forget the line I’ve had memorized and perfect for weeks? Oh, because someone said Macbeth!” This superstition is also a form of ritual that creates identity, like in Van Genup’s Rites of Passage. When she was in her first musical, she wasn’t really part of the group because she didn’t know the superstition about Macbeth. Now that she’s older and more experienced, she takes it as a sign of her identity. She underwent the rite of passage of learning about the Macbeth superstition, so now it creates her identity as a thespian. Her maintained belief in the superstition shows how even when things aren’t necessarily scientific, people can still believe them despite their rational mind telling them it doesn’t make sense. Belief works even against rationality. And just because it hasn’t been scientifically proven doesn’t mean the superstition isn’t true. Maybe there is a correlation between someone say Macbeth and a show going wrong.

Scuba Diver Riddle

D is 19 years old, she’s a college student. She moved to California for high school, and has a large history with camping and hiking. She shared this trail game riddle she learned at summer camp in North Carolina when she was 11 or 12, though she’s also heard it multiple times while hiking. 

“You could call them detective riddles, but they’re all in the same genre of: someone presents a scenario and then the one who’s trying to figure it out is asking questions about the scenario until they get more and more details and they figure out the answer to the scenario. This one is known as the scuba diver riddle. The scenario is “a man is found in the middle of a burned down forest head to toe in scuba gear. There’s no trace of anyone else around him, no trace of how he got there, what happened?” From there people ask questions like “Is he wet? Yes or no. Is he alive?” Sometimes it takes 20 minutes, I’ve seen up to three days, it’s a great thing to play when you’re in the backcountry and really bored. The eventual answer is that the man is someone who was scuba diving, there was a forest fire miles and miles away from sea, and helicopter crews trying to stop the wild fire were collecting water in huge nets to carry over to the forest from the ocean. They picked up this scuba diver, dropped him on the forest fire, he died on impact.” 

This was a new brand of riddle that I hadn’t heard because it seems to be specific to those who go hiking or are out in nature for a long time. It seems like an excellent way to pass a lot of time. It’s really interesting how groups that spend a lot of time doing something repetitive like walking up a trail or camping will get creative to engage their minds over that long period of time. I wonder how far back games like these go. I imagine games like this have existed for a long time, because before cars people often had to walk very far to get to their destination if they were traveling somewhere new, like soldiers marching or people going on the Oregon Trial. I imagine humans have been creating these games for a long time, and they’ve morphed to suit modern audiences, as this riddle is terminus post quem helicopters and scuba gear existing. The informant also said that this riddle was used by adults to frustrate and keep kids busy, because kids like to ask a lot of questions. It seems like a good way to quench kid’s curiosity, because kids are endlessly curious.