The Rainbow Serpent music festival takes place near Melbourne, Australia. Luke went to this festival and found that it was a way of honoring the Aboriginal culture that modern Australia destroyed years ago. Aboriginal people dance and sing in traditional performances as a way of practicing themselves and educating others on their lost culture and spirituality.
Category Archives: Customs
Fijian Kava
Chuck spends a lot of time in Fiji, where he owns property. He lives around villages and considers the locals his family. Every Thursday he goes to the village and drinks Kava, a Fijian ritual drink that the locals often consume to “destress after a long day in a social environment”. He sits in a circle with whoever else in the village decides to join (around 6-20 people depending on the night) on the bamboo floor of a bungalow. They take positively about each other and their lives.
Bonding through Media
Informant Info: The informant is a 21-year-old male who was born and raised in Chanhassen, Minnesota. His parents both moved to America from India when they were in their twenties. He is currently a student at USC studying Electrical Engineering.
Interview Transcript:
Interviewer: Do you have any little family traditions among your family?
Interviewee: Every time I come back to Minnesota. I always watch the same episode of Top Gear with my brother. The same, single episode. It’s called the Vietnam special, in case you want to know. We’ve done it since I left for college, every time I come back. It’s such a stupid episode, but it’s just something we do together and I can’t stop it now.
Analysis:
This tradition is yet another tradition where the sole purpose is to help the family, or in this case brothers, bond. I wasn’t able to gather any context as to how the tradition started or if there was significance behind the tradition, other than the fact that the brother just really likes Top Gear.
Ancestral Visits
Informant Info: The informant is a 21-year-old male who was born and raised in Chanhassen, Minnesota. His parents both moved to America from India when they were in their twenties. He is currently a student at USC studying Electrical Engineering.
Interview Transcript:
Interviewer: Do your parents, being first generation immigrants, have any traditions or rituals that they’ve passed down to you?
Interviewee: Every time we go to India, we take the train down to my mother’s ancestral village, like where her parents and grandparents grew up. It’s really old and small… only like 20 or 30 people live there I think…so it’s really tiny. And everyone is old, I think the average age is like 80ish, not to be rude. But it is really, really important to my mom, so we go every time.
Analysis:
This story represents the significance of ancestral history. Despite leaving India and coming to America, his mother’s ancestral home is still very important her. It is where she grew up with her parents, spent her childhood, and was taught all of the values and traditions that she still carries with her today. For her, she goes to pay her respects to her ancestors and her hometown, and by doing so, the informant is also learning about its importance.
Easter Eggs with Satire
Informant Info: The informant is an 18-year-old from St. Louis, Missouri. She is currently a freshman studying Public Policy at USC.
Interview Transcript:
Interviewer: With Easter just passing, did you or your family celebrate it? If so, how?
Interviewee: Sooooo…. We are not religious, but we still celebrate Easter. What we do is we dye Easter eggs AND then the Easter bunny would hide them in our yard on Saturday. On Easter, we would wake up and have the good ol’ traditional Easter egg hunt. And since we weren’t religious, my parents would sorta make jokes out of it. My mom grew up Catholic, so sometimes she would we toss in prank items, like Jesus band aids. We would then dinner 2pm, which I always thought was early, but hey… home cooked food!
Analysis:
Despite not being religious, the informant’s family still celebrates a typical American Easter, primarily in terms of the Easter Eggs. Across the globe, eggs are extremely important symbols of spring, regrowth, and birth. Once again, family bonding still appears to be the most important factor.