Category Archives: Earth cycle

Seasonal and celetial based

Holiday – Makar Sankranti

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“Makar Sankranti is a well-known celebrated kite flying holiday that we have in India. It originated in the state of Gujarat, however, it’s celebrated all throughout India. It’s called by different names in different parts of India. For example, in northern India, we call it Lohri. It is a harvest festival dedicated to celebrating the sun god and it’s a day that everyone takes off from work to like thank all the harvest and things like that…more of a seasonal observance. One of the traditions we have on this holiday is kite flying which is meant to be a way that people would be exposed to the sun to get rid of the winter which kind of goes along with the harvest season that it brings.”

Context:

My roommate is from India and she talked about this kite-flying holiday. She came to know of this holiday at home. She doesn’t remember exactly what year or age she started participating in this holiday but “[she] remembers [she] was pretty young and kite flying was a pretty big thing.” She remembers it as a day when “everyone goes out and like sees the kites around…there’s a lot of competitions hosted in the neighborhood for who can fly the kite the longest.” This holiday is special to her because “it’s kind of like what Christmas is like for people over here.” It is a way for people to “get along with [their] family and spend time with [their] family.” This holiday is a way to “kind of like relax and connect with [one’s] community.”

Analysis:

This holiday supposedly marks the transition of the sun from the zodiac of Sagittarius to Capricorn. This holiday is set by the solar cycle and often includes many social events for the community to partake in. This holiday is celebrated in January and is regarded as important for spiritual practices. After talking with my friend, it seems as if the holiday now emphasizes social more than spiritual. I think the sun is still an important aspect of the holiday, but maybe not for the same reason from person to person. Oftentimes with holidays, even when they have lost some spiritual elements, they are still celebrated because people have been celebrating them for hundreds of years.

St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun Tradition

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“My mom did something every St. Patrick’s Day when I was growing up. She would sneak into my room the night before, ransack it and put green streamers all around my room. She would write a note from the leprechauns on the mirror in green lipstick and then put green food dye and gold glitter in the toilet like they had used it and left the seat up.

“They were just mischievous little devils … I had a stuffed animal that I really loved, a toucan called birdy friend, and one year she tied up birdy friend with the streamers.”

Context

GR is a 21 year-old college student from Portland, OR, currently living in Los Angeles. Her grandparents were Irish immigrants.

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated every year on the 17th of March. It is both a religious and cultural holiday celebrated by citizens of Ireland and Irish people, such as GR’s mom. Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, where nearly a third of the population believes in the existence of leprechauns.

While she can’t pinpoint the moment she stopped believing the leprechauns were real, GR said definitely believed it when she was really young.

GR said she definitely will continue the tradition if she has kids one day. “It’s just so fun and magical. It brings such joy and silliness and playfulness into your life. My mom helped me realize that, yes, magic is real but it’s something that we create ourselves.”

She even intended to recreate the tradition for her housemates at college this year, but the holiday fell during spring break.

“Something that I do really believe in is creating magic for other people.”

Analysis

The annual celebration of St. Patrick’s Day falls very close to the spring equinox, an example of how folk traditions are embedded in the cycles of seasons.

This idea of cyclic time allows a repeated festival to pull together moments in time. As GR told me about her mother’s tradition of leprechauns wreaking havoc in her room, she was recalling not a singular event but a culmination of every year’s festivities, each year building upon the prior memories of the holiday.

Because festivals have a specific time and place, it was difficult for GR to continue this tradition once she moved away from home, despite her intention to do so.

An aspect of festival time is the idea of ritual inversion, a process by which social roles are reversed or subverted. On any other day, GR’s mom would not be trashing her child’s room; more likely she would be asking GR to pick up after herself. Inverting these norms is part of what signifies that it is a special day.

St. Joseph Miracle — Family Legend

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“My great great grandfather from Sicily prayed to St. Joseph for a favor. I believe he had a near-fatal illness and needed healing. Anyways, he got better. So every year on St. Joseph’s day (March 19) he promised to have a big feast in St. Joseph’s honor and invite friends and family to celebrate. He also had a large St. Joseph statue in his home, which now belongs to my great uncle. 

“More widespread, I believe St. Joseph’s day is celebrated in March because it is believed that praying to him brings rain and bountiful spring crops. Creating a table or altar of offerings is commonplace in Italian tradition, but my family goes above and beyond with the festivities to recognize this family legend.”

Context

SR is a 20 year-old college student from Thousand Oaks, CA. Her family is Catholic and has Italian roots. She first heard the story of her great great grandfather’s miracle when she was very young.

“I believe it was first told to me when I was five or six years old, around the first time I met my extended family in New York,” she said.

The extent of her belief in the family miracle/legend has decreased alongside her religious belief.

“I considered it a miracle at the time, but given how little evidence I have for it actually happening and how I’ve sort of grown out of the Catholic faith, I’m definitely skeptical,” she explained. “However, that doesn’t change the fact that I cherish the tradition and plan to share the legend — as something that may or may not have been true — with my own kids one day.”

Analysis

This miracle slowly devolves from a personal experience of myth (sacred truth) to a legend, reflecting the shifting truth value of the story. In this way, this testimonial is a great example of how the major distinguishing factor between a myth and a legend is its truth value to an individual. SR’s skepticism means that she still values the story as a legend and as a site of tradition, regardless of belief. 

The story of a relative experiencing a miracle functions to strengthen a myth (sacred truth) by bringing it closer to an individual. Additionally, SR learned this story in a familial context, which functioned to link myth (religious belief) with family. Social networks have a strong influence on belief.

The myth also functions to naturalize an aspect of SR’s culture, the St. Joseph’s Day celebration, by endowing it with a sacred origin story of why they celebrate the feast day. These family myths/legends function to create a more personal experience of religious (mythic) belief.

Christmas Punch

Context:

M, 56, is from Mexico; he was born and raised in Tijuana but spent a great part of his youth in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. M has been living in Cabo for over 30 and has owned a clothing store there for just as long. He told me of a Christmas tradition he developed on his own in which he makes punch and hands it out to the people that visit his store.

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I’m going to tell you about the punch that I make every year on December 24th, back home in Cabo San Lucas. Since the early 90s, I began the tradition of offering a drink, punch, which is a Mexican beverage. Every Christmas Eve from noon to nightfall, I give every customer that passes by my store a cup of freshly made hot punch. I do this because it is a Mexican tradition to make Christmas punch, but I also got this idea from my aunts in the U.S. that have a tradition of making apple cider and distributing it at winter holiday events. In Mexico, we don’t do apple cider, but we do have punch, which is similar enough. It is also a demonstration of gratitude and a marketing tactic for my customers. This punch is mostly made of tropical fruits, many of them endemic to Mexico. Some of the ingredients I use are guavas, apples, oranges, pears, sugar cane, tamarind, tejocotes, piloncillo, cinnamon, hibiscus, etc. To make this punch I use a 5–8-gallon pot and boil water, then I add all the ingredients and let it simmer for half an hour. Once all the fruit essence is infused, I add piloncillo to my liking to sweeten the punch. Then it is ready to serve. I know many cultures have their version of a hot fruity drink for the winter; America has apple cider and Europe has Vin Chaud or Gluhwein, but in Mexico we have punch, plus, it’s non-alcoholic. I think this tradition is tied up with many other environmental elements such as the decorations, the cheerfulness, the Christmas carols and music, and the smells; all together they make Christmas more like Christmas. I think the Christmas spirit is about generosity which is why it is so special to give things to people who don’t expect them.

Analysis:

This holiday tradition shows how a larger and more common tradition can be adopted and altered so it can be performed differently by various individuals. This tradition, even though it may appear a simple marketing strategy is more than that, it has been 30 years in the making; it is a ritual that remains unchanged for the most part after nearly three decades. This Christmas tradition is a way of sharing and giving back to a community as a token of appreciation; food and drinks are essential ways of engaging with a community, especially during a holiday that emphasizes the importance of generosity. It is folkloric because of its conception and ritualization; it was inspired by different influences and was coined to fit the needs and intentions of a specific person. This tradition is tied with many other elements to create a truly magical time that triggers nearly all the senses to ensure an emotive and compelling festivity such as Christmas.

Día de Muertos

Context:

F, 18, is a Mexican student at USC. He is from Ciudad Juarez, a city in Mexico that borders El Paso, Texas. F told me about the Mexican festival called Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead.

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Every November 2nd, I celebrate with my family a popular Mexican tradition called “Día de Muertos”. This day is celebrated to remember the people that have passed away. We put together an altar in which we include pictures of the people we remember along with objects that reminds us of them. An example is that we put a picture of my grandfather and a book as he loved reading. This tradition helps us stay in touch with our loved ones and remember that they are with us every step of the way.

Analysis:

Día de Muertos is a traditional Mexican festival that happens yearly on November 2nd. It aligns with many other death-related celebrations such as All Souls Day or Halloween because of the life cycle calendar. Many cultures celebrate death around fall and winter, as they symbolize death and the end of a cycle. Then, in spring, the cycle starts anew and begins with fertility and birth celebrations. In this tradition, it is believed that the Day of the Dead is a liminal period in which the dead can visit their living relatives, this liminal period creates a space for magic and festivities that fit outside of the norm. In this traditional festival, people leave objects that the deceased enjoyed during their lifetime on the altar, so they can take joy in them once more.