Monthly Archives: May 2023

Mikulás

Nationality: Hungarian-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/28/2023
Language: English

Text: 

In Hungary, Santa Claus and Christmas are two separate things, and the Hungarian version of Santa Claus is more tied to St. Nicholas (Mikulás) and has a specific holiday dedicated to him on December 6th. On the night of December 5th, all the children are supposed to clean their shoes and then leave one by the door or window before bed. And that night, St. Nicholas is supposed to come and leave little goodies inside the shoe, like chocolates or trinkets. 

Context: 

The informant participated in this tradition when he was living in Hungary as a child. He explained how this day marks the beginning of the advent calendar in Hungary, and if children behave well for the rest of the month after this day, then they’ll receive lots of presents for Christmas.

Analysis: 

The dissociation of Santa Claus with Christmas is a fascinating element of Hungarian folk celebrations. However, I believe there is a reason for this. Again, with Hungary’s greater focus on a more accurate biblical representation of Christmas, it is not surprising that St. Nicholas (or Santa Claus) would be excluded. St. Nicholas was not present on the night Jesus was born, nor did he become a significant figure until several hundred years later, and so his association with the Christmas holiday is not rooted in biblical or historical accuracy, which is important in Hungarian tradition. There is also a certain significance of filling shoes with gifts. Aside from the fact that St. Nicholas was known for putting gold in the stockings of the poor, which I do believe is part of the origin of this tradition (“Who is St. Nicholas?”), the use of shoes as a way of receiving gifts has starkly religious implications. First of all, feet are a recurring symbol of humility in the Bible, exemplified in the story where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples before the Last Supper. Shoes, then, seem to be a stand-in for this symbol of humility, a way of humbling oneself before God and asking for blessings in the form of gifts. This may also be reinforced in the fact that children only leave one shoe, not both, by the window or door. It further instills the values of modesty and humility in children by making them ask for less than the amount that they’re able to take. In addition, there may have been practical economic reasons for using shoes as a way of receiving gifts as well. Hungary is known for having a turbulent economic history following the dissolution of communism in the country, and the use of shoes to receive gifts could be a callback to a time where the majority of the population had to live more modestly. There were no fancy vases or baskets to put gifts in, so children had to use their shoes, which were more accessible household items. Thus, the relationship of this holiday to humility, both in a religious and economic sense, seems striking and certainly worth further inquest. It also marks the beginning of the advent calendar for Hungarians, after which Hungarian children must behave well in order to receive presents on Christmas. St. Nicholas Day thus sets a symbolic precedent for the type of behavior (kindness, humility) that must be displayed for the remainder of the month until Christmas. 

“Who is St. Nicholas?” St. Nicholas Center: Discovering the Truth About Santa Claus, https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-st-nicholas. Accessed 30 Apr. 2023. 

Professional Mourning

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/2023
Language: English


Text: 

After someone dies in China, you throw a large celebration in their honor, and during these events, people often hire a professional wailer to aid in mourning. These wailers stand vigil and scream and cry for hours following a burial. They wear all white as a sign of mourning and respect.

Context: 

The last time the informant went to China when she was 9, she was walking the streets with her mother and sister in the province of Hunan when she encountered a large funeral celebration, complete with firecrackers, lights, and banners. However, at this celebration she encountered a professional wailer for the first time, dressed in all white and screaming loudly near a grave. Her mother told her that wailing is a way to honor the deceased in China, and the louder the cries, the more you honor their memory.  

Analysis: 

Chinese culture is known to promote the restraint of emotion in public settings. This culture makes it difficult or taboo for individuals to publicly cry and mourn (Cheukie). However, at the same time, not doing so at a funeral would be disrespectful towards the dead, so as a result, the practice of professional mourning was born. This is both a way of honoring the dead while also preserving the honor of the self since it is not socially proper to cry in public, and many might have a difficult time doing so when the situation does call for it. For this reason, I believe professional wailing became popular in China as a way of showing respect and reverence for the dead while also upholding the norms of social propriety. The wailers manufacture emotion, allowing negative feelings to be expressed in a way that is more culturally acceptable.

Cheukie. “Emotional Suppression in Chinese Culture.” Medium, 9 Sept. 2019, https://medium.com/@ckwan95/emotional-suppression-in-chinese-culture-b27325ec493. Accessed 1 May 2023. 

Locsolkodás

Nationality: Hungarian-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/28/2023
Language: English

Text:

Locsolkodás (“Pouring” day) happens on the Monday after Easter. That morning, the young men will pour water or perfume on the girls. Modern versions of this ritual involve going to the women in the household and reciting a short poem to them, after which you offer them “the sprinkling” in the form of a spritz of water or perfume. 

Here is an example of one of the poems that are commonly told:

Hungarian:

Zöld erdőben jártam

Kék ibolyát láttam,

El akart hervadni,

Szabad-e locsolni? 

Transliteration:

Zöld → Green / erdőben → in the forest / jártam → I went,

Kék → Blue /  ibolyát → violets / láttam → I saw,

El → Away / akart → wanted / hervadni → to wither,

Szabad-e → Is it free / locsolni → to water?

Translation:

I was walking in the green forest,

And I saw blue violets,

They wanted to wither,

Am I allowed to water you?

Context: 

The informant participated in this tradition when they were living as a child in Hungary. He explained how the “sprinkling” represented a flowering of youth, vitality, and good fortune for women. He also explained how versions of this tradition have become more tame over time, factoring in an element of consent, whereas earlier versions were more aggressive and less pleasant. 

Analysis: 

At its core, I believe the Hungarian “Pouring day” (Locsolkodás) is a fertility ritual. For one, it emphasizes young girls who are experiencing menstruation for the first time. Franciso vaz de Silva associates menstruation with a rose, “the fruitful aspect of womb blood as well as for youth” (245). The poem above also refers to women as “blue violets,” a type of flower. By associating flowers with fertility, it is easy to see why the ritual of “sprinkling” came into practice. It is a way of symbolically blessing a woman’s fertility and the continuation of her menstrual cycles. The fact that men are the ones doing the sprinkling further reinforces the reproductive and gendered nature of this ritual. It is a way of encouraging a woman’s “blooming” when she becomes able to have children. However, what I also find fascinating is how my informant made a point of distinguishing both old and new forms of this tradition. Antiquated versions of the “sprinkling” included dumping a pale of cold water over a woman while she was still asleep, or taking her to a well and dunking her in. However, more modern versions of this tradition involve a poem, which asks for consent (“Am I allowed to water you?”), something that was altogether absent in earlier versions. The introduction of consent in more modern versions of this ritual shows how cultural values and gendered attitudes have shifted over time, where reproductive rights have become a much more prevalent issue in contemporary society. In modern versions of the ritual, Hungarian women are not being forced into a reproductive role, but rather they are first asked if they would like to partake, and only then if they grant their permission does the ritual proceed.

The Myth of the Jade Rabbit

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: March 26, 2023
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Text: “One day the goddess of the moon, Chang-e, needed help preparing the elixir of life. She knew that humans were too selfish for the task, so she decided to look among the animals. When she arrived, she asked all of the animals to bring her sacrifices, like vegetables and handmade gifts. All the animals offered her gifts, and she collected them, but when she got to the rabbit, the rabbit confessed that she hadn’t been able to find a gift. The rabbit felt terrible, so she jumped into a fire and sacrificed herself, becoming a roasted rabbit for Chang-e to eat. The goddess was so impressed with the rabbit’s bravery and sacrifice that she resurrected the rabbit and brought her to the moon to help her make the elixir. And today, if you look closely enough, you can see the image of the rabbit on the moon.”

Context: The informant is a 19-year old Chinese-American student who heard this at her local Chinese Christian church in Orange County when she was around 8 years old. She admittedly had some concerns about the accuracy of the story but told it how she remembered it. 

Analysis: Despite the story’s explicit condemnation of humanity, an interesting tension arises in how the animals in the story are still indirectly anthropomorphized as they display the ability to understand language and comprehend success/failure on an intellectual level. There seems to be an inherent contradiction embedded in the fact that a human is not able to carry out this task but an animal, who is humanlike in every other sense, gets chosen instead. To explore this further, the central focus of the myth seems to be selflessness and the search for the ideal selfless being. Pure selflessness seems only to be attained by creatures and beings that are simultaneously like and unalike us, such as Jesus Christ, the quintessential Christian sacrifice who was both human and God, or an anthropomorphic rabbit, a non-human animal that exhibits humanlike traits. The rabbit also seems to be a sort of Messiah figure who lays down her life and ascends to heaven to dedicate her life towards serving humanity. Perhaps the story suggests that as humans, we recognize and strive towards goodness/selflessness within ourselves, but at the same time acknowledge that this ideal is unattainable for us as imperfect beings. This fundamental tension embodies the paradigmatic approach to the myth pioneered by Claude Levi-Strauss, who explains how dichotomies inherent in myth are reflective of larger social and cultural paradigms. I believe the tension demonstrated here is the fundamental tension between mortality and the soul: our spiritual capacity for good but our mortal folly that prevents us from always acting on it. Only very special messianic figures, like Jesus and the rabbit, who are simultaneously both human and not, are able to act with this degree of selflessness and bridge the gap between mortality and the divine by performing the ultimate sacrifice. The difference between humans and the messiah is that humans are composed of both body and spirit, only part divine, whereas the messiah is both fully human and divine simultaneously, which is a great paradox beyond our ability to comprehend. Perhaps, this was why humans were not chosen in the story, because such a selfless task requires a being ontologically separate from (but still related to) humanity all together: a creature that physically embodies this Straussian dualism where mortality and divinity simultaneously inhabit the same being. Nonetheless, the connections to contemporary Christianity seem striking, and perhaps these messianic themes have more polygenetic roots than initially thought. This could also serve as a reflection on Christianity’s influence in China and an attempt for the Chinese people to reclaim their own form of cultural agency in the messianic narrative. 

 

The Butterfly Lovers

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: March 26, 2023
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Text: “This is the story of the Butterfly Lovers–it’s really well known and is like the Romeo and Juliet of Chinese legends. So one day, a long time ago, back when women weren’t allowed to be educated or go to school, there was a young lady who wanted desperately to be educated, but her parents told her that she couldn’t. However, she was determined to find a way to go to school and devised a plan to get into a boarding school by dressing as a boy. She managed to get into school and no one suspected anything. While she was away at school, she became really close friends with a guy, and they did everything together, though he didn’t know she was a girl. But as she got older, it became harder and harder for her to hide it. One day, while she was taking a bath in the river, some boys came to make fun of her and were trying to get her to come out, but she couldn’t and her friend came and chased them away. He told her to come out and she told him that he had to turn around, which he did. Once school ended, it was time for her to get married, and she told him that she had to leave, and he got very upset. So she left and was forced into an arranged marriage with a wealthy aristocrat. Her old friend found out that she was a girl and asked to marry her, but the parents said no since the other marriage had already been arranged. So, the two of them ran away and jumped off a cliff, killing themselves since they couldn’t be together. The parents were distraught and realized they should’ve allowed the marriage, so as a last attempt to let them be together, they buried them together in the cemetery under the same gravestone. But at the funeral, lightning struck the gravestone and split it in half, and out of the gravestone flew two butterflies–a pink one and a blue one–and both flew off together into the night.” 

Context: The informant is a 19-year old Chinese-American student who initially heard this as a bedtime story from her parents when she was younger; however, she recently remembered it while working on a screenplay and asked her mother to retell it to her.


Analysis: This legend represents a poignant form of social critique. In The Butterfly Lovers, two young lovers are prevented from pursuing a life together due to the institutions of arranged marriage forced upon them. As the informant acknowledged, it bears some striking similarities to Romeo and Juliet, which was also the story of a couple’s demise following the imposition of an arranged marriage. However, it is not just in the play’s explicit critique of arranged marriage that draws my interest, but also its more implicit, symbolic critique that is worth exploring. Legends have the characteristic ability to blend reality with the supernatural, and the supernatural element can be used as a tool to express or reinforce a social critique or function. This story utilizes the supernatural in this exact way in order to implicitly critique the oppressive and unethical institution of forced marriage. Not only is this message made explicit in how the lover’s kill themselves and their parents’ subsequent regret, but it is twice reinforced by the legend’s symbolic conclusion with the two butterflies that spawn once lightning strikes and fly away together into the night. A butterfly is a well-known symbol of metamorphosis, and in this instance, it represents a transformation into spirit, where the protagonists are no longer tethered to worldly expectations and are free to be together in a new, transcendent form. In other words, and excuse the cliché (although its pertinence and pervasiveness in our culture cannot be denied), love will always find a way, and thus our attempts in society to restrict and control it through arranged weddings, banning gay marriage, etc. will never truly succeed. I believe this legend, perhaps in a way similar to myth, naturalizes love and suggests that oppressive institutions and regulations should never be enforced on it. In reality, the story suggests, love will always adapt and find a way to circumvent the futile attempts to control it. It seems to critique the ancient Confucian principles that prioritize love as duty and commitment in marriage, rather than genuine emotional attachment, and acknowledges that love can exist separately from marriage, which is a fascinatingly progressive message for a piece of ancient Chinese lore. In all, this legend is more than a bittersweet love story, but rather a commentary on the nature of love itself. However, this could have very well been a more recent variation that took on a new meaning to conform to contemporary values and attitudes, whereas older versions which may have taken a more conservative stance that aligned more closely with Confucian ideals.