Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

New Month Prosperity

The Story:

“A tradition I grew up seeing was on the first of every month take a handful of cinnamon and blow it out on your doorstep from the palm of your hand. It’s  so  interesting. It was meant for prosperity, to bring prosperity for the new month. I think this is more of a witch spell type thing, I don’t think it’s cautionary really, but it’s just for you to bring abundance and prosperity to your front door, on the first day of the month.”

Reflection:

The informant showed an example of ritual with the historical link to voodoo and magic. The tradition of cinnamon and the first of every month with the blowing action frame this to be a prosperity spell originating from a folk group. Additionally, something I noticed from the information was the acknowledgment of these spells, but they did not participate. It allowed for the informant to talk about how they appeared in their life while also being able to objectively inform me, an outsider, on the origin and the purpose behind these spells. This allowed for a nice insight of folk magic and just how deeply they are rooted within a folk group, even if it is not practiced by every single folk member. In this case, it was not an active ritual, but had enough significance to still be acknowledged by the informant. The timing of this ritual also shows the importance of calendrical rituals in this case and how they can be the backbone behind certain rituals within a folk group. 

Reid Hall Customs

Text:

“It’s almost like a respect thing — treating Reed Hall as a nice place, you know? Like, you’ll go to other places to be rowdy and stuff. But Reed Hall is supposed to be the place where you are, like, content and calm. So I think it is just a respect thing, because it is like someone’s house, and you’re made very aware of that.”

Context:

The informant attended a private boarding school in Illinois, which dated back to the 1800s. The school’s original headmaster lived in a building, Reid Hall. Pictures of the building during the headmaster’s residency were made visible around the building to mark the historical continuity. The informant initially shared this tradition during winter break, after insisting that the lights be turned off before we left the building, and later reflected on it.

Analysis:

Reed Hall illustrates how place-based folklore can come from more than fear-driven origins. Many campus ghost legends function as a form of protection, keeping certain spaces intact and, over time, evolving into etiquette. Instead of the building behind being haunted, the students were clear that it was someone’s house, fostering a behavioral norm of care and respect. The folk belief has moved past supernatural claims and has actually been folded into the school decorum. The informant’s insistence on turning out all the lights is evidence of successful folk transmission: the etiquette has been internalized and can now operate on a subconscious level.

Igbo Kwenu

Text:

“I’ve noticed it’s really popular in moments of gatherings, especially in moments of sorrow, or in a time where encouragement and bravery are really needed, or just when there’s a lot of difficult energy around — it’s just a way to rally and show support. It usually starts with a male of some sort, and he’ll say it, and then people will join in little by little, and by the time he repeats it for the last time, the whole crowd has said it: Igbo Kwenu.”

Context:


Igbo Kwenu is used as a rallying call at a variety of communal occasions — funerals, graduations and celebrations, the informant said. She first learned it from her Nigerian family, but has seen it used by older people in the community and children of immigrants in the United States. She recited this to her at her school graduation, to encourage her and lift her spirits. “Igbo Kwenu” goes beyond a literal translation, as she stressed that this would not fully capture its meaning, and it serves as an invocation of the collective Igbo identity and resilience.

Analysis:


Igbo Kwenu is a call-and-response oral tradition that ritually builds community in real time. The stacking structure — one voice, then another, until the whole crowd is joining in — is a manifestation of the social solidarity the phrase is meant to celebrate. It is not only expressive but performative in the folkloristic sense – to say it together is to act together. The phrase’s most versatile quality is that it can move across emotional registers; it can be used in grief and in joy, in crisis and in triumph. Its primary function is not to name a particular feeling but to invoke the community itself as a source of strength and support. This versatility is especially important to the diasporic life events in Igbo communities. Igbo Kwenu becomes a folk performance on the move, one that proclaims cultural identity and group belonging in any context.

Yam for Pregnancy

Text:

“Something that a lot of Yoruba and Igbo and just Nigerian people in general will do during their pregnancies is eat a lot of yams. There are many positive associations with yams — they’re seen as a nutritious food, a staple starch in Nigeria, found in many dishes. My mom said that when she was pregnant with me, she ate a lot of yams. And her mom did as well — my grandma gave birth to twins, and my grandma’s mom did too, and my grandma was a twin. I think it’s a good luck thing. It won’t always mean you’ll have twins, but it’s just a superstition.”

Context:

As the informant notes, this practice is common in Nigerian customs related to pregnancy and health. The belief, common among the Yoruba and Igbo people to whom her family belongs, has been passed down through at least four generations of women in her direct family line. She reflects that she has already thought of following the same practice eventually. Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of yams, supplying more than half of the world’s yams, meaning that cultural importance in Nigeria amplifies a value that goes far beyond nutritional benefit.

Analysis:

This belief is a colorful example of sympathetic folk medicine: yams are a food associated with abundance, fertility, and foundational nourishment in Nigerian culture, and it is believed that those same qualities will be imparted to a pregnant body. The association between yam consumption and twin births is particularly interesting — twins are sacred in Yoruba culture, associated with good fortune and spiritual power, and this may be why the belief has such strong associative logic. The documented history of twins in this informant’s family over generations empirically supports the folk belief, at least in the family’s narrative. The community’s encouragement to eat is also an endearing form of support for women during a biologically vulnerable period. Whatever the yams do or don’t do, the practice is an act of cultural continuity: each generation of women who eats yams during pregnancy takes part in a chain of care and tradition that links them materially and symbolically to their mothers and grandmothers before them.

Quinceañeras

Age: 21

TEXT:

Informant- “I would say that one of the coming of age rituals that I have experienced with in my family is quinceañeras. So pretty much it’s once you turn 15, you get a coming of age party where you pretty much use a big old puffy dress and all your family and friends will be there to celebrate you finally being a woman. But I remember in my experience, I didn’t really have quinceañera, unfortunately, due to COVID, everything was closed down since the shutdown had just been two weeks beforehand. I just remember getting my quincea ring, because in my family, we always get rinks once you become 15, it’s just tradition and getting a big old ice cream cake. But my mom’s experience was very different from mine. Since she did have a quincea, it wasn’t extravagant, though. She had a nice, simple silk dress. It wasn’t the big old puffy dresses, and she had all her family there. But my aunt, though, on the other hand, she had a big old extravagant dress, it was pink and black, and she had a whole dance recital on a photo shoot and so on, which was really cool.”

CONTEXT:

This coming of age ritual is very common among Hispanic households across the globe. This tradition comes in the form of a large party thrown for the birthday girl on her 15th birthday in celebration of her new womanhood.

ANALYSIS:

From what the informant shared, I can see how no matter what kind of celebration is given to the birthday girl, though they are traditionally supposed to be very extravagant, the most important thing in my informant’s opinion is to share it with those who you are closest and to be able to symbolize the transition into womanhood with this rite of passage. A unique aspect of the informant experience that I hadn’t heard of prior to her explanation was the symbolic rings that the women in their family are given. I think this is a great signifier of womanhood as jewelry is traditionally used an heirloom that is passed down from generation to generation, and by having this physical reminder of the transition into the next step of life, you are reminded of your new status.