Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Ethiopian Wedding Traditions

Nationality: American/Ethiopian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Washington D.C
Performance Date: 3/26/18
Primary Language: English

Context & Analysis

The subject and I exchanged stories of our family’s traditions while sitting in a class discussion. She mentioned that she and her family were from Ethiopia, so I asked her if she knew of any unique Ethiopian traditions that westerners might not be familiar with. She provided me with an overview of traditional Ethiopian weddings gathered from the ones she and her family attend on a (mostly) yearly basis. She emphasized how many of the ritualistic parts of the wedding preparation are altered or substituted depending on each family’s preferences or personal ties to the country. The transcription is a little disjointed at times because the subject attempted to recount a variety of wedding traditions encapsulated in the ceremony. It was quite interesting to hear a younger woman’s take on these traditional ceremonies.

Main Piece

“So…for Ethiopian weddings…it’s like a, um, a couple days long process—actually it can take up to a month usually. I have 8 aunts on my mom’s side so—and I’ve been alive and I’ve missed three weddings—so every single summer someone is getting married. So like the whole summer we go back to Ethiopia or we travel back to where they are and so actually…there’s a process you do when you have your weddings. So first there’s the, uh, bride’s family celebration and they wash the bride’s feet in honey and milk and, um, they do all her makeup and beauty and stuff and they’ll like play this game there where the groom tries to break in [to the room the bride is in] and they’ll be like “No you can’t be in there!” [laughs], and that’s pretty cool. And these things are mostly ritualistic, like you’re not actually pouring milk on the bride’s feet but some people do. I’ve been to a couple of weddings where people have, um, and that is traditionally the night before the wedding. And the day of the wedding it’s—with my family it’s a lot of pictures and posing. I know with traditions they have the husband—the groom—has to kill a bull, or like a goat, and they cook it for dinner, like the wedding dinner. Like in most American ideas of [a traditional Ethiopian] wedding this happens but it’s like miming, which is like kind of a new tradition, um, but yea. There’s a huge selection of Ethiopian foods and a huge section of raw meat, that’s a thing that people eat a lot, and afterward you have a big dinner the day after which is the bride and groom’s first big party together, hosting like their friends and family. And it’s basically everyone goes over during the day—it’s not like a nighttime celebration—um, and then after that (I cannot remember the name of it). It’s just the bride and groom’s parents and they serve them dinner for the first time, like as a couple, um, in their own house. There’s a lot of ritual of, like, respecting your elders and stuff.”

Chinese Funeral Customs

Nationality: Half Chinese, Half Caucasian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Ramon, California
Performance Date: 4/22
Primary Language: English

Interviewer:  Are there any practices in your culture that revolve around life transitions, like funerals, weddings, or birthdays?

 

Informant:  So at Chinese funerals there is often a viewing beforehand where it’s like a reception and people make speeches and you bow and pay your respects to whoever has died.  And then before you sit down for the service you are given a red envelope that already had money and candy in them.  They are usually prepared by the immediate family of the deceased and then handed out to guests.  And when you go up to casket after the speeches in a specific order depending on family and friends, we did it that way because we didn’t know everyone that had come so we just wanted to have an orderly way of doing it.

 

Interviewer: So who are the envelopes for and what do you do with them?

 

Informant: The envelopes are made of the guests.  You don’t give the envelopes to the deceased or the family of the deceased they give them to those who have come to pay their respects.

 

Interviewer: And what do the envelopes symbolize?

 

Informant: Well I haven’t been to a lot of funerals but I believe my grandparents said that it was for good luck and a way of spreading prosperity.

 

Interviewer:  Do you do anything else?

 

Informant: After the viewing you get into your cars and drive to the cemetery.  At the cemetery then you say more things as the casket is getting lowered.  We also put fake money in the grave with the caskets and we bowed again, and said a prayer.  Some people depending on their relationship to the person who has died, they get different colored ribbons based on the placement of that person in the family.  And then once you get to the cemetery you take off the ribbons and put them in with the casket.  SO my mom wore a ribbon at my great aunt’s funeral but my brothers and I did not.  After everything is done at the cemetery, it is customary to go and visit another place before going home from the cemetery.  You have to spend the money you are given and eat or visit some other location as a way to not lead the spirit back to your home.  And then once everything has passed, the newly dead become part of other festivals like the Ching Ming festival.

 

Interviewer: So in a way everything is connected! That’s actually really cool. Thanks again for sharing.

 

Background: The informant is a Junior at USC studying human biology and a roommate of the interviewer.  She is a second generation Chinese American and is also half Italian.  Her grandparents immigrated from China when they were young and had her mother and uncle.  She has two brothers as well.  For her this piece was also a learning experience because she has only been to a few Chinese funerals and was especially new to taking on a role within the funeral customs.

 

Context: This interview was done during an afternoon in our apartment.  The context of the informant experiencing this custom was when her great aunt died in the previous year on her mother’s side. It was the first time someone relatively close to her had died and she had to take on certain roles like passing out envelopes and where her mother had to engage in the custom of wearing a colored ribbon.

 

Analysis: This piece extremely interesting because I had never heard it before.  It also provided a lot of context for other festivals that the informant had shared with me. Being able to better understand the cycle of a culture’s beliefs made the pieces less like random facts and more like I was truly learning about my roommate’s culture and traditions and where they came from.

 

The Non-Denominational Gingerbread House

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tempe, AZ
Performance Date: 4/10/18
Primary Language: English

The informant spoke of her yearly tradition with her best friend that has been happening for nearly a decade. Every year, the informant and her best friend make a gingerbread house around the holiday season. The two alternate each year for who buys the materials and whose how will it be made at. The pairing listen to Christmas music while they construct the house and “eat most of the frosting.” For the first few years, they would wait until the new year and then they would smash it, but as they got older, they decided they wanted to keep the house alive because of the hard work and effort they put into decorating it and constructing it. The informant’s friend, we’ll call Jane, grew up strictly Jewish, so she missed out on all the Christmas traditions. “Starting like, November first, it’s decorated like Christmas” so Jane always felt like she was missing out on something and wanted to be in that “Christmas spirit” that “makes us all warm and fuzzy inside… even though it’s like 80 degrees out and feels hard to get into the Christmas spirit.” The informant grew up celebrating both holidays because her parents didn’t believe that religion should restrain from enjoying the holidays. The two friends brought their worlds together and since Christmas is such a major holiday, even if you don’t celebrate it, you know the songs and the traditions. So Jane learned from the informant all the feel-good Christmas songs and traditions through the construction of the gingerbread house that would sometimes be decorated in greens and reds and sometimes in Hanukkah colors. The informant told this story with a lot of happiness in her voice and you can tell she was recalling a lot of memories to share this bit of folklore. They do this every year and haven’t missed a single once since when they started (now in their twenties, have been doing it since they were 12). I loved this story for how heartwarming it is and how wholesome it is to bring two religions together through gingerbread cookies!

A Child’s Connections

Nationality: Lithuanian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/3/18
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Lithuanian

The individual who told the following story grew up in Vilnius, Lithuania before moving to San Francisco when she was about five years old.

 

“My older brother, when he was a toddler, he would walk around, well he would be walked in a stroller. Outside. On the avenue around our house. One day our nanny and my brother were walking and they went past some apartment buildings, and my brother started sobbing uncontrollably. He’s normally, or he was normally, like, a normal kid. Especially, at like, he was four during this. He would have temper tantrums if something happened but he wouldn’t burst out crying. So the nanny was really confused but she calmed him down… um. But he kept like pointing to this window in the apartment building. He was crying and screaming, but there was literally nothing there. So, she was like that was weird. But on their way back by the apartment he did it again, to the exact same window. She didn’t understand because there was nothing and no one there, but he was freaking out and he really desperately wanted to get away from the window and the building. And then she told my mom later that night and my mom got really freaked out because that morning in the newspaper she had read that someone had committed suicide from jumping out of a window in that apartment building. So, for whatever reason he felt some sort of presence that disturbed him, that the grown woman couldn’t feel.”

 

I asked if she believed in ghosts. She responded that she believed in spirits, but not in “ooooooh oooooh oooooooh” ghosts (she made this sounds while waving her arms beside her). She further offered that she believed that people had souls and spirits. I further questioned about growing up in Lithuania, if there were any cultural patterns of believing in what she believed in. She commented that especially around Christmas time they would, and still do, leave an empty chair with a plate of food at the table for all the people who have passed. They would also light candles to guide the spirits on their return to the family.

 

A factor of this story that stood out to me is the role of the child. The individual made an effort to explain that the kid felt something, some “presence” which the older adult nanny could not. This is a recurring case in many stories I have heard, ones where a younger child has some perceived connection with different things than adults do. Almost as if most of us grow out of this connection as our brains develop. Also notable is the concept of a lingering should after a suicide. As I have learned, ghosts are perceived most from those individuals who died in ways unnatural, such as a suicide. This element also holds consistent with many tales I have heard, yet they both came from a individual’s personal story. I find this blend of individual narrative and common themes quite interesting.

Tradition of Gift Giving- Christmas (Cali, Colombia)

Nationality: Colombia
Age: 27
Occupation: IT Project Specialist
Residence: California
Performance Date: 4/1/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

During Christmas, it is, really common for people to make a lot of breads and pastries in Columbia to just give to surrounding neighbors. The more popular treats would be empanadas which are a pastry in which the inside is filled with different type of sweet pastes. The sweet pastries are a form of telling your neighbors to enjoy the festivities and have a great time, basically a good omen for the holidays. Alex is a Colombian native who immigrated here when he was just a little boy. His family left Columbia in response to all the violence that was emitting from Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror. In order to keep his family traditions alive, his parents constantly told him about the vast events and beauty of his homeland and people. This seems like a great way to start the holidays with gifts, as how usual Christmas goes in the United States.