Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Informant’s Childhood Romanian Easter Midnight Mass

Nationality: American/Romanian
Age: 79
Occupation: Skin care specialist
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 12, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Romanian

Informant Data:

The informant is a Romanian American who was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1935. At age 37, my informant left Ceausescu’s Romania and arrived in the United States in 1972. She is a skin care specialist who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. She speaks slowly but very impassionedly.

 

Contextual Data:

My informant attended a midnight mass at a Romanian Church in Los Angeles in celebration of Orthodox Easter with her daughter. She did not enjoy the ceremony, and insisted that the ceremony was inferior to the ones she experienced when she was a child. About an hour or so after she attended this mass, I asked if I could record her as she recounted what she remembered about the ceremony of her childhood, since she seemed to really dislike the one she attended with her daughter that day, to which she agreed. The following is a transcript of the recording of her recounting her childhood religious ritual for Easter midnight mass. Mixed in with her description of her childhood mass is criticism of the mass she attended that night in Los Angeles.

 

Item:

(Audio recording transcribed)

“When I was kid, I remember you go to the church…first of all, you don’t go around the church in the resurrection night. That is done on Thursday or Friday, wait, not Friday…I think it’s done Thursday…yes, you do go three times around the church on Thursday night. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful mass, singing and it’s a joy because Christ is going to resurrect. It’s a night of joy, gorgeous, gorgeous mass inside the church. And at midnight, all priests with every staff of the church, with the crosses, they all are aligned, and they do go out from the church, in front of the church, and they are holding a smaller mass. And then, they do mention something in the scriptures, and then the priest starts lighting the candles right at the midnight. And then, when they finish that joy mass, they said, ‘Hristos a înviat, adevărat a înviat.’ And at that time, you do have the light on. Before midnight, it’s a mass inside the church. People are singing beautiful, traditional songs for Easter. That’s beautiful. Usually it’s a long mass. It starts about eight or nine at night. So there’s a long mass at night, and then at midnight you go outside…and in the church, the lights are always on. I’ve never, ever seen without the lights. I think the electricity was broken, because I’ve never seen anything like this. Christian Orthodox churches are supposed to be the most beautiful churches. It is byzantine church. When I’m at a beautiful mass, I don’t see anything around me, because I am with my God. Totally, totally different environment. It is something that elevates me and increases my believing in God, in good, in help…it elevates me. I didn’t feel church here. It’s sad.”

 

Analysis:

The focus of the Easter midnight mass ritual that this informant fondly remembers has some similarities and differences from a contemporary Easter midnight mass ritual I recorded. Although that they are similar in that people do at some point walk around the church three times, this informant was visibly upset by the differences: the fact that the midnight mass included walking around the church three times on Easter when it should have been done (according to this informant) on Thursday night, the fact that the mass was shorter in length than what she knew, the fact that the church where the mass is held was more ornate as child then it was that night, and the fact that the lights were turned off at some point during the mass when she had never experienced that in her childhood.

I found it incredibly interesting how these variations in the same piece of folklore could have such an emotional effect on someone. It was very reminiscent of that film we watched one day in the Forms of Folklore class on how insulted Serbian people felt when someone stated that people from another country claimed that a beloved, traditional song of Serbia in fact originated from that other country.

Contemporary Romanian Easter Midnight Mass

Nationality: American/Romanian
Age: 57
Occupation: Real estate agent
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 12, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Romanian

Informant Data:

The informant is a Romanian American who was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1957. At age 19, my informant left Ceausescu’s Romania and arrived in the United States in 1976. She is a real estate agent who currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

 

Contextual Data:

My informant attended a midnight mass at a Romanian Church in Los Angeles in celebration of Orthodox Easter with her mother. She enjoyed the ceremony. About an hour or so after she attended this mass, I asked if I could record her as she recounted what she remembered about the ceremony, to which she agreed. The following is a transcript of the recording of her recounting that night’s religious ritual for Easter midnight mass.

 

Item:

(Audio recording transcribed)

“It began with the church all in the dark, symbolizing…it’s all dark. You have to look back in the Bible and see what happens when they…because basically this is when they went to the tomb and didn’t find Jesus. So then it was dark, and they were reading from the Bible. The priest brought the light, a lit candle out, and then he had everyone, and everyone had their own candle, come and take the light. To me it’s almost like he was saying he wanted everyone to come to partake in this happening, in this good thing that just happened, and come and take light. And then everyone went outside of the church and everyone went around the church three times. And I think that represents the stations of the cross. And then the singing. And everyone sang, ‘Hristos a înviat din morţi, cu moartea pre moarte călcând, si celor din mormânturi, viaţă dăruindu-le’ … which means ‘The Christ came back from the dead, stepping on death, and gifting forever life to us.’ And then they knocked on the church door asking the priest to open the door. And the priest asks ‘Why?’ and the people say ‘because Christ has risen.’ And they knock on the door three times before the priest opens the door because it represents the trinity. The trinity is always present in these sort of things. It’s the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. That’s the trinity.”

 

Analysis:

I thought that this Romanian Easter tradition was very interesting and very well-explained by my informant. When the church becomes dark and the priest brings in the light, it makes sense that that would be symbolic of the dark tomb Jesus Christ was buried in according to the Bible. The lighted candle component seems to be symbolic of the good found in how Jesus died for our sins but then was born again on Sunday. The prevalence of the number three (whether it be walking around the church three times or knocking on the church door three times), as my informant said, seemed symbolic of the Holy Trinity, which is an important symbol in Christian belief.

Chinese New Year in Shanghai

Nationality: Chinese/Canadian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: February 19, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese

Informant Data:

The informant is an 18-year old student who was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1996. He moved from Canada to Shanghai, China when he was in middle school. Both his father and mother have Chinese ancestry. He is a freshman at the University of Southern California and thus currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

 

Contextual Data:

My informant was Skyping with his family on Chinese New Year, which in 2015 happened to be in mid-February. Once he finished Skyping with his family, I asked him if he could tell me a little bit about Chinese New Years and specifically how he celebrated Chinese New Year in Shanghai. I asked if I could record his response and he agreed.

When asked what he liked most about the traditions he does on Chinese New Year, he said his favorite part of it was definitely lighting the fireworks at midnight and watching them with his family as they exploded in the sky above.

 

Item:

(Audio recording transcribed)

“So what we do is we go and buy a ton of fireworks early on in the week. It’s like we’re celebrating the arrival of spring. So then on the day before Chinese New Year,  my whole family including my extended family, get together usually at my family’s house. And all the kids, my cousins…they get these little red envelopes which I guess symbolize good luck. And then we all have dinner, which includes dumplings, which I guess are eaten for good luck too. And then, once it gets to midnight, we always light a bunch of these fireworks and set them off right in the backyard.”

 

Analysis:

I can note there’s an interesting emphasis on good luck in the Chinese New Year customs in Shanghai, so it seems that good luck is an important belief in that society. There also seems to be an importance in celebrating with fireworks every year, which might speak to the importance of Chinese New Year as a holiday in that society, since at least to the informant, one usually celebrates Chinese New Year with big festivities like firing off many fireworks at midnight at one’s home with one’s entire family.

You can’t give people sharp objects

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant Data:

The informant is a 19-year old American student who was born in Corona, California in 1996. Her father is Indian and her mother is African-American. She is a freshman at the University of Southern California and thus currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

 

Contextual Data:

I was hanging out with the informant in the common area of her suite, and I asked her if she had any folk beliefs that she believed in. She thought about it for a moment, and then she told me that she thought of one.

When asked why she believed in this folk belief and/or why it appealed to her, she told me that it just seemed like common sense that you wouldn’t give a sharp object to someone because it just seems threatening or menacing, and so she supposed that is why the folk belief she knew predicted that you’d have a bad relationship with someone you gave a sharp object to.

 

Item:

“You can’t give people sharp objects because it means you’re going to have a bad relationship with them in the future.”

 

Analysis:

My theory is that this belief perhaps comes from an idea that giving someone a sharp object suggests that they should be ready to fight something, which could be interpreted as an aggressive act on the part of the person who gave the sharp object.

Can’t buy people shoes

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant Data:

The informant is a 19-year old American student who was born in Corona, California in 1996. Her father is Indian and her mother is African-American. She is a freshman at the University of Southern California and thus currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

 

Contextual Data:

I was working on homework in my dorm room when my informant walked by and told me that she remembered another folk belief that she knew (since I had asked her earlier that day if she could think of any folk belief).

When asked why she believed in this superstition and/or why this folk belief appealed to her, she said that she just followed it simply because it was a good idea to not buy other people a pair of shoes because it’s hard to know if they’ll fit well. Then, after a moment of thinking, she also proposed that since this folk belief came from her father (who is Indian), this idea that buying people shoes means they’re beneath you might relate to the Indian caste system.

 

Item:

“You can’t buy people shoes because it means that they’re beneath you.”

 

Analysis:

I feel that my informant was on to something when she said that this folk belief might have to do with the Indian caste system. Perhaps the act of buying people shoes suggests that they don’t have money to buy their own shoes, which would very well suggest that whoever bought the shoes believes that the people they bought the shoes for are beneath them. Furthermore, it’s likely that the poorest members of Indian society (that are the lowest on the caste system) wouldn’t likely have the means to readily buy shoes, so the act of buying shoes perhaps even further suggests that the people receiving the shoes are somehow connected to the lowest level of society.