Author Archives: Sabrina Rivas

Christmas Eve Traditions

Nationality: Mexico
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (University of Southern California)
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 1, 2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

In my family, we… always go to Christmas Eve together. We go to mass together at… seven or eight p.m. We always sit in the… left… front left of the church, um, after we go and see, uh… like, the floats that people make for Christmas, and they’re decorated with, like, Christmas lights and nativity scenes and scenes from the Bible, and there’s, like, kids and adults dressed up, um… with costumes from… Biblical characters, and then after that’s done… um… we go back to my grandma’s house at like ten p.m. Um, and before dinner, we gather around the nativity scene that’s in my grandma’s… uh… like, behind the front door… and we sing to baby Jesus, then we pray, we do a little reflection of the day, then we kinda go around and say things that we’re thankful for that year, um… like, how we were blessed that year. Uh… then we do, like, an Our Father together and hold hands, then we do, like, a closing, um, song. And then before we put baby Jesus in the manger, we give a kiss, and put in the manger, and then we go into the big dining room… where… uh, my grandma’s already, you know, set up the table, and we always have turkey on Christmas Eve with… like, the turkey’s made with red wine… and we have, like, a fruit salad that my grandma makes, it’s homemade, and… uh, sometimes the dessert, uh… like, an original recipe that she has for a… like, a chocolate cake… and after we’re done with dinner, we usually play games or go to sleep if we’re really tired.

 

Background (from interviewer):

My informant is from Morelia, Mexico, and comes from a very conservative Catholic family. She is very close with her family, and returns to Morelia to visit them at least twice a year. She is also deeply religious and is very involved with the Catholic Center at USC.

 

Thoughts:

The repetition and specificity of these rituals show my informant’s and her family’s commitment to routine and her traditional background. They also emphasize her devotion to Catholicism and the religiosity of the holiday, and strengthen her bonds with her hometown and her family, since they do this all together as a family, gather at their grandmother’s home, and eat the same kind of homemade meal every year.

Dance Traditions

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (University of Southern California)
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2, 2017
Primary Language: English

For dance, like, um, when I was with the company, the night before the show, like, we’d always have sleepovers, and we’d always drink three… three strawberry Fantas each, which is really bad for you, ’cause you’re not supposed to drink soda, obviously, the night before, but we did it anyway, it was just like a good luck thing.

 

Thoughts:

This good-luck tradition reverses something that it supposed to be discouraged and taboo and turns it into a ritual for luck. It shows the dancers’ and teenagers’ in general tendency to bend or break rules. Additionally, because my informant is a highly trained and very talented competitive dancer, it could speak to her and her teammates’ confidence that they will be able to perform their best regardless of drinking soda the night before a performance. The context of this tradition within a sleepover works to build a community and bond with the entire team, since they are spending the whole night before a performance (and presumably the entire day of the performance) with each other and participating in the same rule-breaking rituals.

Connecting with hometown through country music

Nationality: American
Age: Unknown (late 20s or early 30s)
Occupation: Writing Instructor at USC
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2017
Primary Language: English

When I was little, um… my dad was in the army, and so we moved around a whole bunch, but he— both my parents are from Arkansas, this kind of, like, rural place that’s pretty country, you know? Um, but since he was in the army, we moved around so much, I didn’t really have any connections with, like, where they were from, and so things took me by surprise a lot, like, um… Okay, so… uh… one of them was, um, I remember going to visit, like, my grandma once and then my cousins were all singing this song… Um, it was, like, the early nineties, I think, maybe ninety-three or ninety-four, but um… everyone was singing this song, “Achy Breaky Heart,” which was, like, Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley Cyrus’s dad, and it… Anyway, it was just, like, going to Arkansas, and then it was just inundating the… the culture, like, the song, you heard it everywhere, wherever you were. It was on the radio, people were singing it, they loved this song, and I was just like, “What is going on here?” So that was my sort of interaction with southern… country-ness, um, country music.

To watch/listen to the song, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byQIPdHMpjc.

 

Thoughts:

This is an example of an authored piece of music moving into the area of folklore and cultural identity. Even though the song “Achy Breaky Heart” was a popular commercial song, it impacted my informant only after she had visited her hometown and seen how the people there had adopted it so deeply into their culture and identity as “southern” and “country.” Because she had not lived there, she perceived the “inundation” of the song differently than her family and others more familiar to the in-group of her hometown.

Soccer Game Rituals

Nationality: Mexico
Age: 15
Occupation: Student
Residence: Minnesota
Performance Date: April 14, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish, Chinese

So in my soccer team, uh, like, before games, we always put our left socks on before our right socks, right? And then, we always, like, put on our left cleats and then our right cleats, but then we tie our right cleats before our left cleats. Oh, and then I always tuck in my shirt.

 

Background:

I guess it’s lucky, kind of. We do it every game, so I can’t really tell if it’s lucky or not. It’s just, like, a ritual that we started and we can’t change it, because then, like, it might turn unlucky or something.

 

Thoughts:

This team-wide pre-game ritual probably helps to build a bond or sense of community within the team, and allows the players to identify with and trust in each other.

Stealing Props

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Minnesota
Performance Date: March 12, 2017
Primary Language: English

There’s this huge tradition in theatre… our high school theatre… uh, department… where after we close a show, everyone in the cast and crew, like, steals one of their props or, like, a piece of the set or something. And we’re not technically supposed to do that, like, all the props and sets are supposed to, like, be deconstructed and put back in the vault, but, like, nobody actually cares. But um… yeah, my first show at the high school, I didn’t know this was a thing, so I didn’t take anything, which… I cry (laughs). But then for the spring show my freshman year, I… we did Pippin and I was one of the, like, farmer guys in Act Two, which, like… wooo, big role, I know, but, um… during strike, I almost forgot about that, but, uh… fortunately, I was just walking around backstage after school one day, and I found my hat that I wore for the show, which was just, like, a really redneck-looking baseball cap… and it was just lying on one of the tables backstage… I don’t know if, like, somebody forgot to put it back with all the costumes or something, but, like, yeah, I just decided to take it, because I’d forgotten to take any other props, and, like, you know, it was my first speaking role in a high school show… I mean, a small one, but you know, and so… yeah, I guess I just wanted to keep it. Uh… but yeah, I’ve seen people walk away with… like, whole pieces of sets that they just keep in their rooms, I guess, or, like… just other props… I know the middle school kids are starting to take props from their shows that they do, too, so… I guess it’s spreading (laughs). But yeah, I guess it’s kind of a problem within the theatre department, you know, like, we’re supposed to give them back so they can use them for future shows, but, like, in all honesty, they hardly ever do, they mostly just sit there in the prop vault for years… and, like, honestly, our school has enough money to just buy new props if they need to, so, like… nobody actually cares that we’re just stealing props and set pieces, and it’s… it’s pretty cool to, like, keep parts of shows you’ve been in or worked on, so we just do it.

 

Thoughts:

The tradition of stealing props or set pieces is a highly sentimental one. After working for weeks or sometimes months on a show that closes after a few performances, those involved in it want to keep pieces of the show to remember it by, especially since a show’s closing is usually very emotional (the same informant, as well as others, tell me of cast parties during which everybody cries the whole night). It also allows cast and crew members to show others or “prove” that they were a part of a particular show, since they have a keepsake from it. This tradition also points to high school students’ desires to break rules and get away with “sneaking around” behind the adults.