Author Archives: Jordan Hanes

Beltane and Modernizing Tradition

“A lot of it is making it up as I go along, it’s really hard to pin down which are the fire festivals because they all involve fire. Beltane is for sure one of them. This is a midpoint festival, in between the spring equinox and summer solstice. It’s about the coming of the bright half of the year, something more heavy and developed than Ostara, which is about light. Here, things actually start blooming.

“Historically, this is when a lot of weddings (a.k.a. hand fastings). A lot about sexuality, life and unity. This is where the May Queen, someone getting crowned queen and getting adorned with flowers. Here in particular, fire is a purifying force in the sense of getting ready for something instead of getting rid of something. They would have cows run between their fires for fertility, or extinguish their personal fires to light a communal bonfire. Symbolic of reawakening a spirit of community.”

Context

It’s tough, especially since I’ve been trying to figure stuff out and make my own traditions out of the old traditions. I don’t really have the time to do that now. I grew my first tomato on the day of Beltane. It was a wee little thing, but I treasured it so much. To see something you nurtured coming into itself was really nice. [For this holiday, I] decided to focus on fresh produce, and ate a bunch of tomatoes with a friend. The friend smoked, I had an edible, and we cooked stuff with the tomatoes.”

Analysis

The informant talked at length about cultivating their own traditions, building out an identity, faith, and practice, by looking back at older, more esoteric examples. Rituals are often symbolic of our identities and what’s most important to us. For the informant, a resonance with nature led her to holidays and traditions that honored that connection.

The constraints of modern living, however, have forced her to adapt that celebration to meet her current needs. A busy life doesn’t leave much room for experimentation, and many of the symbols evoked by Beltane can’t really be accomplished in modern settings. It’s difficult finding the space to have cows run between fires these days.

How we celebrate evolves with the times, but why we celebrate doesn’t. Does a ritual still remain the same if the practice of it is different, but the essence of and motivation for doing the ritual remains?

Collard Greens and Black Eyed Peas for Financial Luck

“While I don’t have a whole lot of rituals or superstitions my family does have a few things we do every year around the holidays. The first is that on New Year’s Day we always have collard greens and black eyed peas with dinner. The greens symbolize paper cash and the peas coinage. The idea is that eating these foods will bring us wealth and success in the New Year.”

Context

“Though both are soul food staples and are enjoyed across the country, I’m not entirely certain where this tradition comes from. My Dad was born in South Carolina and my Mom was born in Michigan and I think it’s a tradition from my Dad’s side of the family more so than my Mom’s so it’s possible the tradition stems from the Black community in the American south.”

Analysis

Personally, I saw an immediate connection between the superstition and the symbolic representation of the greens and peas. Similar to communion bread and wine representing the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the collard greens and black eyed peas represent financial symbols. I assume this metaphor is based on the visual similarities that the food has to their symbolic objects: collard greens evoke green paper bills, while the small collections of round peas could loosely reflect a collection of circular coins. The folkloric representation of these two objects as food is directly tied to observable and similar aspects both share.

Additionally, the act of ingesting these symbols as food is itself symbolic of the intent of the ritual: to gain financial success in the New Year. These symbols, and the folkloric power they carry, are digested and become a part of the energy needed to sustain ourselves into the new year. Financial success gets as close to us as it possibly can through the consumption of its metaphorical representations, becoming a part of our being that we carry into the future.

Samhain and Spiritual Perseverance

“Samhain is the Celtic new year. There are essentially 8 big observational holidays/festivals in the Celtic wheel of the year. Those observe the solstices and equinoxes, as well as the halfway points between them. Samhain is the start of the year, which starts going into the dark months instead of out of them. This is because the Celts were so focused on the harvest. For them, the day started when the sun set, not when it rose.

It’s one of the bigger [Celtic festivals]. It overlaps significantly with All Hallow’s Eve, which inspired Halloween. It’s a 2-3 day celebration. Traditionally people would dress up during this time. Because it was going into the colder months, people believed that the veil between our world and the next was especially thin, so they would dress as spirits to ward off interference from other spirits. Turnip carving, which was also meant to ward off spirits, eventually evolved into pumpkin carving. All Hallow’s Eve has definitely transitioned into more of a Catholic thing though.

That’s when they would do the wicker man burning. [The details] depends on which clan you’d ask, but they would build a massive… man out of straw and kind of put a sacrifice in there. Obviously, the informant doesn’t do that. It’s about the new year, honoring the dead, and the final harvest. It would end with the Dumb Supper. This might overlap more with witch stuff, but it’s celebrating the final harvest with your family, and members who have passed have come to join in the feast and celebrate with you. That’s October 31st to November 1st.”

Context

The informant tends to celebrate it with a bonfire and feast since it’s the biggest of the fire festivals. The informant also liked spirituality as something that existed in harmony or in connection with nature. They found something meaningful in the solstices and equinoxes, more so than Christmas or other holidays. The changing of nature has a lot of concrete meaning. It’s an energy that they can see and feel as opposed to something more abstract.

Being in harmony with nature is important to the informant. She started learning about the druids first (she’s not a formal member of the religion) when she was working on a project. She felt a “vibe,” the festivals made a lot of sense to her, and they honored harmony with nature while maintaining a certain whimsy. They referenced the circle of life, its ebb and flow, the constant motion rather than static holidays.

Analysis

The informant felt an emotional connection and spiritual resonance to festivals like Samhain. Despite not being an official member of the Druidic faith, these seasonal celebrations aligned far more with their perception of reality far more than static, arbitrary holidays like Christmas or New Year’s. It’s well documented how festivals and rituals are markers of great change, and I think it’s interesting to note how these festivals form around perceived changes in our environments. Furthermore, how similar observations hundreds of years later can compel a person to find affinity with celebrations of old. Beliefs shared across the diaspora of time connect our past and present in profound ways, and it’s fascinating to comprehend why Druidic beliefs can still resonate so strongly with people outside of the faith and beyond its heyday.

Christmas Breakfast

“[This one] is even more specific to my family. For a number of years my family would make christmas breakfast together, each of us responsible for one specific part of the meal. My Dad loves breakfast meats so he’d find some nice bacon or breakfast sausage to make. My Mom adores home fries and so she’d always make sure we had some in the house over the holidays. My Sister LOVES cheese so she would always add a bunch to our scrambled eggs on Christmas. And I’ve always had the biggest sweet tooth of the four of us so I was in charge of baking the biscuits for whatever assortment of Jams or honey we had in the house.” 

Context

“I don’t know if other families tend to collaborate like this on Christmas, but I loved that we did so much. I’m not very religious but Christmas has always been synonymous with love and togetherness. And especially since my family does express love and care for each other through food in our own ways, eating that meal that represented all of us was really lovely. I’m glad we did that, even if it was only for a few years.”

Analysis

Speaking for myself, Christmas brunch was absolutely a tradition in my family. But unlike the informant, making breakfast was handled almost entirely by my parents. My brother and I would be too busy playing with our shiny new toys. But the informant’s family clearly has a different perception of the role Christmas breakfast plays in their own celebrations. Each family member contributes to the meal with their own taste, combining their palettes into a breakfast symbolic of their shared family bond.

Family traditions are microcosms of ritualistic folklore, small habits and activities that cement the bond between family members. What do these permutations of family rituals say about the families who practice them? From what I see, the informant’s version of the Christmas breakfast highlights their shared familial bond, and the many ways in which different people meld together to create a family unit. For them, the act of making the meal is a shared experience for the entire family, and a time for them to come together during the holidays.

Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit

“Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit” is a saying performed on the first of each month to ensure good luck for the entire month.”

Context

“I’m pretty sure my mom is the one who started saying it – it’s an English tradition and she’s from India, so I don’t 100% know where she got it from, though. We differ in what exactly the rules are – I say you just have to say it first thing [in the morning], but my mom says someone has to hear you say it.”

Analysis

Wishes and rituals for good fortune or luck are universal. If your luck turns around, theoretically it would affect every aspect of your life. Wealth, romance, career prospects, health… there’s no need for a fortune teller when the universe seems to favor you. Luck covers a lot of bases, so it makes sense that it would be something to wish for.

Rabbits are, historically, creatures that embody luck. Holding onto a rabbit’s foot is said to bring you good fortune. Thankfully, saying the animal’s name three times at the start of the month helps avoid possible animal cruelty. Still, it’s important to note the thematic, rabbit-y overlap between two luck-based superstitions, as it shows how rituals that cover the same areas can draw from the same inspiration, but be performed differently.

Speaking of performing differently, it’s interesting to see the divergence in this superstition between the informant and his mother. Even within family units, the exact specifics surrounding a superstition can differ and be performed differently. For the informant, it’s enough to invoke the saying to only the universe. For the informant’s mother, the act only works if another is there to witness it. Why does this difference exist? Did the informant’s mother re-interpret the ritual when she adopted it? Did the informant develop their own version of the superstition after interacting with other demonstrations of it?