Monthly Archives: May 2026

Women’s National Championship Celebration

Age: 20

Context:

The informant attends the University of South Carolina, which has a nationally ranked women’s basketball team. In the past few years, the team has won the NCAA championship multiple times. The informant has witnessed campus wide celebrations each year they win.

Text:

The informant recounts that if the USC women’s basketball team wins the national championship at the end of the season, crowds gather to jump in the fountain outside Thomas Cooper library to celebrate. Hundreds of people gather to celebrate immediately after the game is won.

Analysis:

This celebration is a ritual that helps create a sense of communitas since the entire student body joins in to cement a social bond through their sports team’s victory. Jumping into the fountain serves as a rite of passage that transforms a mere fountain outside a library into a place with communal meaning. This tradition turns the team’s success into a part of the entire university’s identity to create a collective sense of pride and belonging.

Blessing a New House

Context:

The informant has only moved homes twice in her life. Each time she moves her family does this custom before moving their stuff and furniture into the space. It is a Hindu tradition.

Text:

When the informant moved into her new home, a priest had to ensure the space was good to move into. The priest blessed the home and performed a pooja involving incense, allowing for her family to fully move in. The priest had the family repeat after him to chant in Sanskrit. The informant admits that she does not know nor understand this language.

Analysis:

This practice is a transition ritual, where moving homes involves leaving the old home, a liminal blessing of the new one, and re-introduction into a purified environment. These processes within the ritual reflect Van Gennep’s rites of passage where the pooja holds culturally shared significance. Using incense and chanting, the house is symbolically transformed into a sacred, safe space. In this way, people can manage their anxieties and uncertainty over new environments with such spiritual protection. Additionally, the informant’s relationship with Sanskrit demonstrates an instance of esoteric communication, where meaning is rooted in tradition even if it is not fully understood by participants.

Kumkum Sacred Powder

Age: 20

Context: This red powder, referred to as kumkum, holds religious significance to the informant. She recalls it being spread on her forehead after praying.

Text: The informant puts this red powder, kumkum, on her forehead to signify devotion and spirituality. Although her family buys it from a store, she believes it is made from combining turmeric, a prominent holy ingredient in Indian food, and lemon.

Analysis:

This practice involves material culture and customary folklore as kumkum is symbolically used to express religious identity. The application of kumkum on the forehead connects to Victor Turner’s two poles of symbolism, as the visible red mark indicates a sensory experience that reflects a larger idealogical, spiritual meaning tied to faith. The belief about its natural ingredients, even when store bought, shows how folklore holds vernacular significance and can impart sacred meaning onto everyday ingredients like turmeric.

Puttari Festival

Age: 23

Context:

This festival is celebrated in November to early December. People come together to prepare special foods and honor the gods for plentiful harvest, which is important for the informant’s community that is is dependent on agriculture.

Text:

Puttari is a traditional festival of harvest for Coorgs. “Puttari” means new rice and is celebrated when crops are ready to harvest. On the day of the festival, family members come together at their ancestral family home, or “aine-mane” and cut sheaths of rice to bundle up. During the festival, they pray to the gods of agricultural, transportation, and tools for good harvest.

Analysis:

Puttari is a calendrical festival that celebrates the agricultural cycle. From a functionalist perspective, the ritual expresses gratitude towards the gods and reinforces cultural values around family and dependance on land. The emphasis on returning to the “aine-mane” demonstrates how folklore is rooted in cultural meaning, places, and ancestry, and the festival acts to maintain continuity between the past and present.

Kaveri Shankramana Festival

Age: 23

Context:

The informant comes from a cultural community that values agriculture. He comes from a distant line of native farmers and plantation owners. The festival is performed back in the city he is ancestrally from. It is not performed during a specific time, but instead depends on the progression of nature. The informant remembers his mother lamenting on the importance of this festival.

Text:

Kaveri Shankramana celebrates when fresh spring water flows into the Kaveri river. This is an approximate time and people tend to bathe in the river during this festival. Rice is thrown in celebration to honor the goddess Kaveri. A jug of the holy water from Kaveri is kept in each home and when people fall ill, they are to sip from the cup to heal them.

Analysis:

This festival acts as a ritual tied to the time of year according to nature. The acts of bathing in the river and throwing rice turn nature into a sacred, meaningful place that connects the informant to the goddess Kaveri. The use of the stored water for healing invokes the idea of sympathetic magic, as described by James George Frazer. Specifically, the healing property of water reflects contagious magic, in which contact with a sacred source continues to influence others even once separated from the original source itself. As a result, ritual healing appears to produce real perceived effects for those suffering from sickness.