Author Archives: Steven Cassettari

Christmas Wafers

My informant had a tradition that they took part in every Christmas. My informant and her family would go buy thing bread wafers. They would then meet up with their larger family for a party. At this party each person would have one wafer and would walk around and meet everyone there. After this started when they talked to someone they would hand out their wafer and the other person would rip off a small piece. The ripper would then wish the holder of the wafer “good health” or “prosperity”. The ripper would then eat the small piece. They would then switch places and wish the other good health or prosperity while ripping off a piece of the others. The people at the party would go around doing this until everyone had ripped off a piece of everyone else’s bread. It was a polish tradition according to my informant. My informant eventually moved away from her family though and she no longer participates in it.

This tradition is a way to bond a community closer together. The ripping and eating of pieces could represent giving yourself to the other person and becoming closer as a family. Christmas is traditionally that focuses on family and this reinforces that belief. This is especially as seeing that the tradition isn’t celebrated without a large family present. Even the responses became rituals over time as promoting a positive theme at the event is really important.

Blessed Easter Baskets

Every Easter my informant, her mother, and her brother would all get to together in order to fill an Easter basket with the food they would eat the next day. They would have polish sausage, butter lamb, candy, colored eggs, salt, vinegar, and bread. They would take the basket and bring it to their church and the priest would sprinkle holy water on it. Once this was done they could bring it back home and wait for Easter to start as they were fasting up until Easter morning. My informant said that this was a polish tradition.

This tradition is deeply tied to religion, but is also one to focus on family. The family got together in order to put focus on what they believe is an important event. It wasn’t a completely solemn activity as candy and colored eggs were brought to be blessed in an attempt to fuse the two aspects of fun and family and religion.

Passover Meal

In spring every year there is the Jewish holiday Passover. It is a ritualized meal celebrating the end of their slavery in Egypt and their freedom as a result of it. Before the meal a Seder plate is made with certain food items on it. There is a bone for which my informant cannot remember, bitter vegetables representing the bitterness of slavery, a hard boiled egg, and Horosit, apples and nuts, which represents bricks and motar. Once that is set in the center of the table the meal begins. When sitting to eat one doesn’t eat sitting straight up one should lounge to show you can do what you want with your freedom. Also one is supposed to drink 4 cups of wine during the meal. During one of the glasses they will list the ten plagues and when each is listed they will dip a pinky into the wine and make a dot on their plate representing the blood and death of the plagues. Also throughout the meal Matzo bread is eaten which is unlevened bread. This is a bread that jewish people took with them when they left Egypt.

This is a ritual tied to a religion. In order to commemorate and remember the event certain aspects of the journey are represented in the meal. The whole meal has metaphors for aspects of the journey that the original celebrates of Passover thought were essential to remember. My informant was not very religious but he still viewed the holiday as an important way to celebrate his heritage and be with his family.

 

Annotation: This ritual can be seen being talked about in an episode of The Daily Show originally aired on April 9th 2012 called Faith/Off.

Eyelash Wish

In the occasion that someone’s eyelash falls out in the company of another and that person can grab the eyelash for the person who’s eyelash it is to wish on. The person who grabbed it will put it on their finger and the person who’s eyelash it was will then wish. My informant was taught this by his family and he did this almost exclusively with them. As one would have to touch someone’s face it is a fairly intimate gesture that one wouldn’t do with casual acquaintances. One can grab their own eyelash that detached and still get a wish, but the main point of the act is to have someone else do it for you. It loses some of its meaning if one does it to themselves.

This is a form of contagious magic as the eyelash used to be in contact with the person and they use this link to make a wish on it. My informant no longer believed that it would result in a wish being granted but saw it more as a gesture of intimacy between family members or close friends. While the basic theory of the magic would lead to one person being able to do it the fact that my informant said it wouldn’t be same alone proves that intimacy is a main feature of the method.

 

Fight Fire With Fire

This expression is typically used to say that one should retaliate against an enemy using the same methods that one is attacked with. While it is counter intuitive to use fire to put out a fire in most cases the meaning of the expression doesn’t come from that. It is the fact that fire produces a powerful image in one’s head and using fire to fight fire can create an image of responding to an intense attack in the same way. My informant used the example of if someone spreads a bad rumor about you, you should in turn spread a rumor about them to fight back. This is an expression my informant has known about for as long as he can remember. They can’t necessarily remember a specific place where he learned it, just that he learned it.

Fighting fire with fire is an expression that has been around a long time. It is a folk metaphor as the expression applies to more than just putting out fires. While this may not be what people mean when they say this expression and it may be a bad in most cases the origin still may have come from a literal use of the phrase. Sometimes firefighters will burn certain areas in during a forest fire in order to cut off a fire so it will burn out. Thus they fight the larger fire that is a threat with a smaller easily controlled fire.