Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Eating In Chinese Restaurant on Christmas

Nationality: American
Age: 55
Occupation: Musician/ Web Producer
Residence: New York City, NY
Performance Date: April 20
Primary Language: English

“Ok… the tradition is every umm year for Christmas Eve or ummm Christmas Day we are Jewish, we do in fact go to a Chinese restaurant to eat ummm dinner and it’s a very silly thing. and we do it because we heard about the tradition and it’s a very… you know… as somebody who’s Jewish, you do feel a little out of place during Christmas because it’s all consuming everywhere in society and so it’s kind of like a funny thing that’s become a tradition of actually participating in your own way christmas which is if you’re Jewish you go to a Chinese restaurant so… it’s…that’s… it’s funny it’s almost like a counter tradition or a part of the tradition of Christmas that a Jewish person would eat in a Chinese restaurant”

That’s interesting about this tradition is that it isn’t really traditional to Jewish culture, it’s a very new thing for Jewish people to celebrate christmas in this way. It’s a way to feel included within Christmas. The informant seems to have gotten the tradition from his peers. He is from New York City which does have a high population of Jewish people. The fact that New York City has this high population of Jewish people seems to permeate the culture of his current residency.

Cinnabons at Macalaster

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Paul, MN
Performance Date: 3/17/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

Informant Description/ Context of performance: Over our spring break, one of my friends told me about a tradition they hold in a music group she’s part of at school. The music group is called AME, which stands for African Music Ensemble. They have concerts a couple times throughout the semester, and after each concert there is an after party filled with various drinking games and traditions. The professor who runs the group is called Sowah.

Original Script:

Interviewee: In Ensemble during our after parties we make Cinnabons… while we are hammered out of our minds. And ALL the people who take singing lessons with Sowah sing a song that has a word in it that sounds like “Cinnabon” and then we feed pieces of the Cinnabons to everyone. But the rule is that you can’t feed yourself, you MUST feed someone else a piece.

Me: Do you know when that tradition started? Or like how it started?

Interviewee: It was started by this person named Natalie like 6 or 7 years ago, and people enjoyed it so we just kept it going. I’m not 100% sure as to like why it started though.

Me: Got it, did she just randomly make it up or was there some reasoning behind it?

Interviewee: Yeah okay so the reason it was Cinnabons was because the song has a word in it that sounds similar to Cinnabon, like if a person who doesn’t know anything about AME or any of the African songs at all and head this song, they’d be like “why are they talking about Cinnabons?” And then at the very end of the song, we go MMMMMMmmmmmm. So it’s like MMmmm its so yummy at the Cinnabons.

Conclusion: One thing I’m always curious about is how these traditions came about. How did someone just decide to set these rules that would soon to go on to become tradition for many years to come? There was no clear answer in this case, but it was interesting to observe a culture like a music group in a small liberal arts school in Minnesota.

 

Gaucho Song

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Santa Barbara
Performance Date: 2/18/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

Informant Description/ Context of performance: My older sister and a bunch of my friends go to UCSB. The big sport there is soccer, and when I went to a couple of games, I quickly learned some of the UCSB sports traditions. I interviewed my friend to expand on the traditions.

Original Script:

Interviewee: Yeah so we like throw tortillas onto the field after scoring, especially when we play our rivals – Cal Poly. At first I thought it was super weird but people get like SO into it. It’s like our “fight on” because it’s just us showing off our school spirit. Because tortillas are kinda relevant to gauchos..? Kinda sucks for the person cleaning up at the end though.

Me: Do you know how the tradition started?

Interviewee: I think it started in like the 90’s but I don’t know the “first time” it happened or anything. It’s just spread a lot since then, like it’s more and more known each year. And we like sing our unofficial school song or like chant as we throw them onto the field.

Me: Oh what’s the song?

Interviewee: Ole ole ole ole, gauchos! Gauchos! And then we just repeat that a few times.

Conclusion: I always wonder how these school spirit traditions started. For example, how did “Fight On” at USC begin? Who made the “V for Victory” symbol? How did it spread? Every school has its own traditions and practices, but UCSB stands out from the rest with its tortilla-throwing spirit. 

March Madness Mania

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Florida
Performance Date: 03/22/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Informant Description: My friend grew up watching March Madness religiously. By the age of 7, he was creating his own brackets and knew every player on every team. Even now he never misses a game, and he has some pretty funny ways of making sure his team wins. (He has never won the bracket).

Interviewee: So this is pretty simple. Every time someone from the team I want to win makes a shot, I have to switch to the other side of the couch. I think it helps the “fung shui.”

Me: How did this start?

Interviewee: It started so long ago, when I was 6 maybe? It was a Duke game, can’t remember who they were playing. But basically, I had to get up to pee a lot or go get food, and every time I got up and moved around, they would score! So my mom made this joke. “Guess you have to move every time if you want them to win!” And ever since… it’s just been a thing.

Me: Have you passed this on to other people or is it just you?

Interviewee: Funny actually I have all my friends do it too. It was rough during the playoffs when there were 7 of us to one couch/. It was like playing fucking musical chairs!

Conclusion: I think there are a bunch of sports traditions and superstitions that people have, and I always wonder how it gets started. A personal example is my dad and I refuse to watch football unless my mom is upstairs in her bedroom. That started this one time when every time my mom came in the living room with the TV, my team would fumble or lose possession.

Carving Initials into Tree Trunks

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Phoenix, Arizona
Performance Date: March 14, 2017
Primary Language: English

My informant is a childhood friend, and during a visit home she brought up a grade-school memory of carving initials into tree trunks. I remember doing this with her when we were very young and so I asked her to elaborate on the memory from her point of view.

Me: ” What was it that you carved into the tree trunks and when did you do this?”

KC: “Well, when I was in grade school so like third, fourth or fifth grade I suppose, at recess sometimes the girls, in a group, would get together no more than like three girls I guess, and get either a sharp stick or pen or pencil and pick a tree on the playground. On the tree they would carve their initials and under that, carve a plus sign and under that, they would carve the initials of their crush, so a boy they liked. Sometimes if the girl was really crafty they would carve a heart around those initials. It would supposed to be like, you had a crush on them and you were proving that you liked them or something, or maybe it would make them like you back or maybe like in the future you would date or something. It was all very innocent like super girlie and cute.”

Me: “Who did you learn this from and when?”

KC: “You know, I have absolutely no idea. I just remember doing it, because all the other girls did it and you did it as a group. I don’t remember being taught by like older girls or anything, just doing it and then maybe teaching it to other girls my age and getting a group together. It was kinda like a game I guess, something to do at recess. But, I do remember you could get in trouble for it, like not in trouble for the liking boys thing, but for vandalizing the tree or something like that.”

Analysis:

This is a sort of childhood game or maybe even a version of contagious magic as the little girls wanted their crushes to be reciprocated in the future. This is perhaps an example of gender roles being explored at a young age, as this is young girls in a group exploring naively the future of dating.  Girls are defining themselves as feminine as they perform this ritual of carving initials as they known they are expected to “like” boys in a romantic way some time in the future. They are naive and unaware of what that truly means, but at this age is when they are introduced to the idea of romantic relationships. Thus, this is playing at “liking” boys in the way they encounter in real life. Boys are no longer “icky” at this age and they mix a lot more and as they encounter the world around them and view dating and romantic relationships this is their way of understand it. It may also be a childlike version of contagious magic as usually the girl wants the person whose initials she has just carved to reciprocate the crush.