Author Archives: Katherine McCormick

White Horse Ornament

Nationality: American
Age: 60
Occupation: Banker
Residence: London
Performance Date: March 19th, 2013
Primary Language: English

“Your mom always lets me hang up my horse on the tree. She always puts up the tree and decorate the tree, but the horse is always left for me. She always had the brown horse and I always had the white horse, and so leaving the white horse always left me contributing to the tree just a little bit, so we could still do it together.”

This is a tradition enacted in the informant’s household every year since he was married in 1981. The informant and his wife would always want to decorate the tree together, but over the years when she quit her job to take care of their children, she often would decorate the tree at some time during the week while they were at work. Because it was a tradition that they decorate the tree together in preparation for Christmas, she always left him the white horse as a way for him to participate in decorating the tree (other than aiding in bringing the tree into their house). The white horse was important to them because they got the horses as a set, and therefore had meaning to them as a couple rather than just as individual ornaments. Tree decoration is a family activity, and this tradition has spawned so that everyone in the family always has at least one ornament that they put on the tree themselves if they will be there for that year’s Christmas.

Friday Pizza

Nationality: American
Age: 60
Occupation: Banker
Residence: London, UK
Performance Date: March 19th, 2013
Primary Language: English

Every work week from 1978 through 1998, my informant had pepperoni pizza on Friday nights. It changed pizzerias as the informant moved (Melo’s in Pleasant Hill, and then the main pizza place on Bainbridge Island), but the custom remained the same. The informant stopped when he moved to Hong Kong because he couldn’t find decent pepperoni pizza there, and then shifted the practice to the weekends when he returned to the United States.

This pizza was a celebratory event, a treat at the end of a work week no matter how stressful or easy that week was. It’s subconsciously carried on in his family, as Friday night is the most likely night on which they order pizza for celebrating the end of the week, relaxing afterwards and preparing for the week ahead. It’s an adaptable tradition, as it changed over time when other factors in his life changed.

Baseball-Inspired Game

Nationality: American
Age: 60
Occupation: Banker
Residence: London
Performance Date: March 20th, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a game played by my informant in his childhood in the 1950s in Guadalupe, CA, inspired by baseball.

“We used to play this weird game where one guy would be a first baseman, and he’d stand on the sidewalk in front of our house. Down on kind of the far side, and then the other person would be on the front yard of the house next door, because there was no fence between the two. And then the guy who was the firstbaseman would throw a ground ball that was really hard to get and you would try to field it, and the firstbaseman would count to five. And if you got it back before the time he counted to five it was an out, and if you didn’t it was a hit. The assumption was you have to get the guy before he gets to first base, and he would get there in five seconds. Then friends would come over and visit, and they would play, and it just kind of spread. It’s a bit tough because you need two yards, and not everyone had access to that, so it was played most often at our house. Or you could just use a big yard but again most people didn’t have it, but yeah. I tried to teach it to Jacquelyn, but she didn’t like baseball.”

This game is a variation of baseball, in which the players don’t have access to a team or a bat with which to hit the ball. It kept the children playing with the ball and thinking about fielding, mimicking the fieldwork that perhaps one would use in a real game. Baseball was one of the main sports of choice in this town in my informant’s time, and thus it could fuel the children’s desires to play and keep them practicing early. It’s quite resourceful, and demonstrated the importance of the sport given how much of their leisure time they spent mimicking it.

Collard Greens and Black Eyed Peas for New Year’s

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 3rd, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a New Year’s tradition practiced by my informant and her family every year.

“If you have collard greens on January first then you’ll make a lot of money, maybe because they’re both green. Similarly, if you have black eyed peas, then you’ll have luck throughout the rest of the year. And it has to be on January first. And then you just have meat, that’s not symbolic but you need something to go with collard greens and the black eyed peas. My grandmother told me that, and so she cooks for us for every new year.”

The tradition of eating black eyed peas for luck is also a Jewish tradition, and goes back for many centuries. It’s popular in the American south, probably brought there by the Jews and adopted by the society at large. As the informant says, collard greens are also a common New Year’s food thought to bring wealth in the coming year, as they resemble American bills. Both foods are exceptionally common in the American south (thus allowing most people to partake in the tradition without causing undue budgetary stress), which is where my informant’s family lives. The emphasis on it being January 1st also reflects the notion of its importance as the beginning of a new unit of time, in a liminal period where anything could happen and one could presumably set the tone for the next stage in life (ie, the new year).

Good Friday Contemplation

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

“My dad grew up in a very strict Roman Catholic family. His mom was from Italy, from a city near Rome, very strict. And so every good Friday from 12-3 (which is supposedly the time when Jesus was on the cross), she made my dad sit in his room and think about Jesus’ suffering. Until Jesus was ‘off the cross’ and he could come out of his room. But he spared me that. But apparently, she had done that—her mother had done that to her, her mother had done that to her, and so forth. Not praying, just thinking about Jesus’s suffering and sacrifice for three hours. It went way back.”

Good Friday is the day that, according to Christians, Jesus was crucified and thus made his sacrifice to save humanity. This ritual was presumably meant to focus devotion and think about what Jesus had done for mankind, to try and understand the value of his sacrifice. Rather than praying, which could easily just be beseeching at that age, this tradition could mean to honor the suffering and the actions of Jesus, hopefully inspiring piety and good behavior thanks to the contemplation of such immense suffering. It is significant that it was meant to occur at apparently the same time that Jesus was on the cross so many centuries ago; such a thing would make the exercise more meaningful (homeopathic magic), possibly inspiring the person who is thinking about the suffering to be as brave or as compassionate as Jesus.