Author Archives: klause

Greek Egg-Breaking Easter Ritual

Text: “So every Easter, the day before we will dye hard boil eggs and everyone will have an egg and on Easter we will go around and one person will try to crack a side of your egg. and you’ve got two chances So you go in a circle until everyone has broken both sides and one person has at least one good side left. So yeah. And then they win.”

Context:
Informant is a freshman at the University of Southern California studying Psychology, originally from Palos Verdes, CA from Greek-Jewish descent. We speak in the dining hall, and she is very excited and happy to be recounting her experiences.

“It’s epic and it’s fun and you get to do something with your dyed eggs. I don’t know, you know. It was just something my parents, I guess we were doing. We do it on both sides of the family. But I believe it’s like a Greek thing, and I have heard of at least one other person who does this. Well, I never win, so you know, like I, I enjoy it because it’s something our family does every year. It’s a way to use the eggs. You know, it’s fun to color eggs and stuff. So like then you get to actually like play a game with it.”

Analysis: This tradition is an example of a ritual performed in celebration of a holiday. The term “Easter” comes from the name of a pagan goddess and symbolizes new life and fertility. The ritual furthers this symbolism with eggs also being reminiscent of reproduction and fertility. The bright colors which they were being dyed are representative of the season of spring and the blooming of colorful nature. Although Easter is now largely recognized as a Christian holiday, rituals such as these have little relation to the biblical story of Jesus Christ. This ritual could be argued to be an example of ritual license because of how the eggs are dyed and played with which are activities usually discouraged when they relate to food items.

Thanksgiving Ham

Text: “My family always buys pre-sliced ham from our local grocery shop on Thanksgiving, and it’s really good with the special glaze that it comes with. It’s like this honey pineapple type glaze that’s sweet and then you combine the sweet with the savory from the ham, and it’s just an amazing concoction.”

Context:

Informant is a freshman at the University of Southern California studying human biology, originally from St. Louis, Missouri from Nigerian descent. We speak alongside a few of her other friends, and she carries a somewhat sarcastic, comedic tone.

“It’s a classic Thanksgiving staple in our family. And I honestly prefer eating the ham over turkey any day anytime. We began doing it when we moved into my new house which is my current house back at home. So probably 2013, 2014 ish. I think we do it because it’s way easier to prepare than a Turkey, and it tastes better. I’ve heard of other people doing it, but not for Thanksgiving more for Christmas. This tradition makes me feel so excited to wake up on Thanksgiving morning. I can smell the sweet, savory aroma of the ham tickle my nostrils. Wow.”

Analysis: Having this specific dish on a certain holiday is an example of a ritual. It is a ritual which commemorates something, namely the early days of colonized America. It is performed within a certain group of people at a specific time of year. It is also an example of ritual inversion in how modern folk tradition places ham on the menu for Christmas and turkey on the menu for Thanksgiving, but the informant’s family reverses these traditions. They are able to invert the normal social rules because they have claimed their own celebration as their own time for traditions and rituals.

Birthday Football Game

Text: “For my birthday, my dad and I used to go to the first UT Austin football game of every season.”

Context:

Informant is a freshman at the University of Southern California studying mechanical engineering, originally from Austin, Texas from Chinese descent.

“My dad really likes UT football and my birthday always fell around the time of the first game of the year. I haven’t really heard other people doing this. I mean, I’m sure people did it, but I haven’t heard. It’s fun, I like it, it’s good time with my dad. When I go, I remember the previous years.”

Analysis: This is an example of the ritualization of individual life cycles. Ritualizing individual life cycle is a way in which we derive our identity and symbolize the identity we are trying to project. For the informant, this ritual integrates football, her hometown, and family as a part of her identity. The when is clearly defined as the ritual occurs at a scheduled time each year and commemorates a very specific event of her birth alongside her father who also symbolizes her birth somewhat.

White Elephant Ritual

Text: “My family organizes a big white elephant on Christmas Day that everyone is involved in. Everyone brings a present and then everyone exchanges it.”

Context:

The Informant is a student at the University of Southern California, speaking with admiration and nostalgic reminiscence as these memories are recounted.

“My extended family on my dad’s side mostly live in New Jersey, and they’ve grown up there. And every Christmas we spend Christmas with them. We have like a designated path where first we go to like this aunt and uncle’s house for the morning, then we hit like this aunt and uncle’s house for dinner. But at the first place, we do the white elephant. And the significance of this is that my family is huge. My dad has seven siblings, so there’s a lot of people involved in this white elephant. And it kind of takes up the entirety of the first half of the day. And these items become recurring things that people will just have with them whenever we see each other.  And they’ll like, kind of have memories from years before, like, oh, remember when this person got this. So it actually is like an event of Christmas. And often times it’ll be like references to family jokes or just like family things. Like my family watches It’s a Wonderful Life every single Christmas. And then one Christmas people got Bedford balls and It’s a Wonderful Life shirts, just like so interesting and niche. I think as I’ve grown older, I liked it a lot more because, I’ve felt a lot more part of my family. And it feels like we’re reinforcing that we’re all part of a group and that we’re actively keeping it alive through traditions, not just seeing each other, but caring about each other, like wanting to have individual connections with each other. That’s a family. I think white elephant can be fairly common, especially with friend groups. I have heard of other people doing this tradition, but I don’t know if people do it as consistently. Like this is my family’s white elephant.  When people are kind of thinking ahead of time of what to bring like what has been mentioned, what has been joked about over the past year at family gatherings, like, yeah, it’s very topical to the year kind of like the past experiences of what’s been happening. So it feels like a recap family thing. I think maybe when I was younger, I wasn’t super aware of it. And then as I became older, yeah, I think we’ve been doing it like every single year.”

Analysis: This white elephant tradition is an example of a ritual that is performed in celebration of a holiday. It is considered a ritual because of its nature of being performed at a certain time, planned, commemorating Christmas, among the same group of people. There is little distinction between the participants as audience and performer because each person takes on each role at certain times. The white elephant ritual specifically is an example of people having ritual license, where they act in ways that are not normally acceptable. This can be seen in how participants are allowed to steal others’ gifts and give ‘gag’ gifts that hold no real value. Despite the white elephant ritual being a widely known game especially in the U.S., many families and groups like the Informant’s can find personal significance in performing the ritual.

Midnight Birthday Candle and Banana

Text: “At midnight every year, I blow out a candle, but I save it for midnight Eastern Time, ’cause that was the time that I was born in. And then I also eat a banana at midnight.”

Context:

The informant is a student at the University of Southern California studying Political Economy and originally from Minnesota, speaking almost in a hurry and without much emotion resembling nostalgia or fondness.

“Apparently I used to coincidentally eat bananas for the first couple of years of my life, and now it’s just kind of become my little tradition for my birthday. I think it’s when I was a kid, my grandma used to always be a really strong advocate for bananas because she said potassium was good for you. And the night before my birthday I would normally spend the night at her house, just because you know, who doesn’t want to spend the night with their grandma on their birthday. And they just sort of started happening. But when I was a kid, I also didn’t really stay up till midnight for my birthday. So it was normally like, right before I went to bed, right when I woke up. Now it feels like I have to do it because it just kind of reminds me of home, I think. And I think that it’s a nice way for me to just kind of remember my childhood a little.”

Analysis: This tradition is an example of a ritual performed in celebration of a commemoration of a significant event, in this case a birthday. In ritualizing a birthday, an individual life cycle is being celebrated which contributes to the formation of one’s identity. This individual life cycle is being ritualized in a manner that puts it on the calendar cycle. This specific tradition occurs at midnight, ritualizing the liminal or the “in-between” which is often considered to be where the magic happens. In the uncomfortable nature of change, the transition is celebrated to make it more exciting and desirable. The sequence of this tradition is also evidently important as many are in rituals, with the candle first and then the banana.