Author Archives: Eliott Lanz

Hospital Flower Taboo

SG: In Persian Culture you never, ever, ever ,ever, ever, bring black gifts or flowers or anything to a hospital patient. it’s considered an omen that the patient won’t be leaving the hospital. Its preferential to use blue or turquoise colors in order to ward off negative energy.

Context: She learned this from her Persian family members, and actually performed the occupational hazard herself and was reprimanded by her parents. From then on she has made sure to only gift and wear positively associated colors in hospitals.

Analysis: This occupational taboo reflects the high stakes environment of healthcare, where symbolic associations are treated with the same caution as physical symptoms. Superstition is intensified in such spaces, where the stakes of life and death are raised. People draw closer to death in such spaces and thus are more inclined to follow natural laws and folk beliefs in a last ditch effort to claim some sort of power over natural forces like death.

Birthday Spanking

AZ: In my family we do birthday spanks. You get one swat for every year you’ve been alive, plus one to grow. My dad usually does it while we’re all standing around the cake before we blow out the candles.

“Interviewer: I know this is a common folk ritual, however is there anything your family specifically does to modify this practice?

AZ: Now that you mention It we make sure to do the spankings at the exact hour the person was born, in order to “spank” them into the next chapter of their life”

Context: This is a multi generational family tradition passed down from her paternal grandfather. To AZ, this is a nostalgic and grounding ritual. While the act is playful, the family takes the timing seriously. The added later of the timing transforms a general game into a practice of family law. She views the physical sensation as a necessary “spank” into her new age.

Analysis: This ritual is another example of how folklore can be localized through variation and a secular rite of passage. However, the specific modification AZ describes, performing the ritual at the exact hour of birth, elevates the practice from a general custom to a sacred domestic event. Anthropologically, this emphasizes the importance of liminality. This is also connected to sympathetic magic, and the physicality of the action in the present propels the individuals journey into the future.

The Hmong Flower Cloth

AZ: My mother makes these embroidered cloths called pajamas Ntaub. She says the patterns aren’t just decorations, they are codes. Certain zig zags represent mountains we crossed, and the little red squares are the seeds of our future. If you sew a bird, it means you are sending a message to someone who has passed away.

Contact: The informant is a classmate, and her mother immigrated here from Laos. The conversation was sparked when I saw a Hmong cloth pinned up on her wall in her room. She then described the cloth as a living history book, that functions as a way to maintain her cultural heritage in a country that often forgets Hmong history.

Analysis: This is a sophisticated example of material culture. Unlike vernacular folklore, this is a visual piece of folk communication where history is encoded into visual objects. From a socio political perspective, the folklore responded to the displacement of the hong people. When written language was suppressed or lost, the folk art became the primary archive of the communities journey. This reflects the rubrics focus on historical values, and the cloth is not just an aesthetic object but a tool for cultural survival and vernacular storytelling.

Telling the Bees

LH: In my families old farm in the Midwest, whenever a family member passed away someone had to go out to the backyard and ‘tell the bees’. You have to knock on each hive and whisper the name of the person who died. If you don’t tell them, the bees,

Context: The informant is a close friend, and he learned this folklore through ancestral tradition through the maternal line, originating from English Immigrants who settled in the Midwest. We were disscssing ecology for another class when he told me this story. To the informant, this custom represents a deep “ecological contract” in which his family is keeping the bees in the loop because they regard them as family due to their facilitation of plant life. Its an honor code as they believe the bees deserve to be a part of the mourning process.

Analysis: Telling the bees is a profound example of a folk custom that illustrates animism, the attribution of living should to plants, inanimate objects, and animals. The ritual serves a vital functioning purpose in the grieving process: it forces the bereaved to step outside the domestic sphere and engage with the natural world, providing a structures, meditative task during a time of emotional chaos. Historically, this piece of folklore responded to the high stakes of rural survival. The loss of bee colonies is a significant economic blow, highlighting how some folklore practices arise out of necessity,