Tag Archives: doorway

Russian Greeting Ritual: Never Shake Hands Through a Doorway

Original Text: “My family has a lot of different customs. And a big part of Russian culture is in the greeting. Basically, whenever you greet someone you have to shake hands and make eye contact. That’s specifically for men like they shake hands. If it’s a man and a woman, you shake hands but more gently. If it’s two women they kiss on the cheek three times. But for men shaking hands, basically, you have to make eye contact, but a really interesting rule is that you cant greet someone through a doorway. You have to invite the person in before you make a greeting cuz it’s seen as bad luck. I learned this from my family, anytime I tried to hug someone or greet someone through the door, they would be like ‘No you have to bring them in and welcome them’”

Context: The informant is an 18-year-old first year at USC. He is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but his family is from Russia. He learned this Russian greeting custom from his close and extended Russian family and still practices it today. He is a male, so he has participated in the man-man and man-woman greetings. It is a way that he can “relate” to his Russian family and show his love for his heritage, and of course not bring bad luck upon his family.

Analysis: In Russian culture it is bad luck to shake hands through a doorway, and people will refuse to shake your hand if you attempt it, just as the informant described. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the in-between space of the doorway, outside, and inside is a liminal space. A greeting cannot be properly given in a liminal space because of the magical bad luck that exists because of it. Shaking someone’s hand inside the home is a physical manifestation of the greeting due to the location of the handshake. Russian culture is patriarchal, therefore it makes sense that men would shake hands in a display of power versus kiss because shaking hands is not associated with sexuality or expressions of love. They also shake hands with women gently versus firmly because they are more fragile/dainty. Women kiss each other on the cheek, mirroring the emphasis on love and sexuality that permeates women’s lives as opposed to men. 

Pomegranate for New Years

Main Piece:

Informant: We crack a pomegranate on New Year’s Eve, or like as soon as it like midnight again, I don’t know why, like if I asked my mom she’d be like like this just something we have to do. I’m like, okay, cool. Yeah, like I’d guess pomegranates are a symbol of life and like a new beginning kind of which is why you crack it like, you know, at midnight for the new year. But no, she takes it very seriously too. So like, for example, this past New-New Years. It was just me my mom, my sister. My dad was at work and yeah, so we watched the ball drop in Times Square. And then my mom had a pomegranate ready, like a full one, like you don’t touch it at all. And what you do is you go to your front porch or like the entrance to your house or like, wherever you want something that’s like, again, like an entry. I feel like in Turkey that that’s a lot of important like entrances of like, you know, you start something new, so you want to do it at an entrance of your life or something like symbolizes, you know, like when you walk into your home, it’s not something new. It’s a new year. So anyways, we go to our front porch and you’ve just like hold the, the pomegranate the full thing in your hand and you just drop it and you have to have a crack if it doesn’t crack, you know, you just keep going. And then and then it’s like okay, yay. Like now the new year has officially begun. So for her it didn’t it doesn’t start till then and then you you know, clean up the shells. And as many of the seeds that didn’t touch that like the seeds that are still in the pomegranate. Obviously, you throw the ones that touch the ground out and then you eat the seeds.

Relationship to the piece:

“If we don’t do it, then it doesn’t feel like the start of a new year. It doesn’t feel like the past is behind us. Like something it just kind of like commemorates a new beginning and if we don’t do it, it’s like we’re still in the old year. Kind of thing.”

Context: 

The informant is one of my friends, a 20 year old Turkish American theatre major at the University of Southern California. I was told this as we were hanging out in her room after I asked her about some of the traditions she grew up with. 

Analysis:

I’d never heard of this tradition, but I feel like a lot of traditions surrounding the new year have to do with inviting in what you want for the New Year, but for my informant, this tradition is about welcoming in the New Year. Breaking the pomegranate is like breaking open the new year and then you have to ingest what’s been broken, you’re literally taking in the New Year. I also think it’s interesting how, for many children of immigrants we follow traditions because our parents tell us to, rather than doing it because we know exactly what it means. We just know that certain holidays don’t feel right if we don’t follow these traditions. 

Greek Traditions: Entering and exiting a building

One Greek tradition tells that when you enter a building you should always leave through the same door you entered from.

My roommate is half Greek and she learned this tradition from her mother.  She told me the reason for this tradition was because if you enter from one door and leave through another the string of your life will become tangled.

This is an interesting tradition because it clearly comes from a belief system that is no longer generally accepted by people living in Greece.  The idea that there were strings of our lives is now archaic but the cultural belief lives on, even without the superstitious meaning behind it, showing the power of tradition and the performance of this piece of heritage.