Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Hawaiian “Baby’s Firsts”

Nationality: Okinawan, Filipino, Korean, Hawaiian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Aiea, Hawaii
Performance Date: March 18th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Hawaiian

ʻahaʻaina māwaewae

The rituals start with the baby’s birth. ʻAhaʻaina māwaewae is the celebration 24 hours after a child’s birth—so what happens in this one is that… it’s like whereas the ʻahaʻaina palala (one-year celebration) is a physical celebration of the child surviving, the ʻahaʻaina māwaewae is more of a psychological celebration. This is where you decide the pathway for the child, and decide to take the responsibility of its safety and welfare. This is also when you dedicate the child to the ʻaumakua, and the reason for this is so that the child won’t be high strung and unruly; so that the child follows the traditional values of the family and their belief system. ʻAumakua is a family guardian that can take shape in the form of animals or plants or elements.

 

hiapo

Hiapo is the first born. Doesn’t matter what gender, it’s just the first born child. The reason why hiapo is so important is because that’s who the elders are gonna look toward for responsibilities and to perpetuate the traditions and to prepare and teach the younger siblings and the younger generations when they come. That’s why the ʻahaʻaina māwaewae is so important, especially with the first child, because they need to be nurtured and they take so much time.

When a woman finds out she’s pregnant, her husband will start raising a pig for the ʻahaʻaina māwaewae, and then as soon as the child is born, there’s special seafood that’s secured—these foods are like symbols of the child to be like. So… they’ll get a crab/fish (ʻamaʻama and/or āholehole) because these are the `aumakua of the area, and these are mainly specific to the families that grow up in Kaʻū because a lot of these peoples’ guardians (`aumakua) is this animal…

So the ʻamaʻama crab and the āholehole fish are the `aumakua—so they (the family) eat it to pay homage to him (the guardian), and that’s like a form of dedicating the child to the `aumakua… and then they also have lūʻau leaf (taro leaf) because kalo (taro) is the plant form of Lono, and Lono is the god of harvest and fertility. And they also have mahiki, which is a kind of shrimp, and mahiki literally translates to “peel off,” like fish scales… that one is meant to peel off as in peel off the bad; you want your baby to be “clean,” like they don’t want him sheathed in bad things.

Then they have kala, seaweed, and that word means “to loosen or set free.” Like you’re literally separating the child from his mother and that child is now independent in a way, and now, with the support of his family, is going to learn what he needs to, grow up and survive and eventually actually be independent from the family. And at the same time, they’re going to eat ʻaʻama, because that means to paʻa … “to stay close with the family,” because although the child is going to learn to be independent and learn to take care of himself, he is also going to remain close with the family and understand that he needs to take care of them. Because the Hawaiian way of thinking is that you can’t have any… there’s no rogues—everyone belongs somewhere, you are a part of a family unit and it’s uncommon if you aren’t. If you’re not, that means you did something very wrong. Family is the most important thing.

They also have mele inoa and mele maʻi that they have at the different `ahas… `aha `aina is like a party, it’s like a pa`ina… so a mele inoa is a name chant—pretty much self explanatory; a chant about your name. But when you get your name depends… Some people will go to a kahuna (priest), and they’ll ask the kahuna to dream—that’s how a lot of people get their names, through dreams. Someone will dream it up. There’s other ways you could get it, you could be named after a grandparent or an elder. You could have an inoa hoʻomanaʻo (a name in rememberance of a person or an event), relating to a past event or mostly to recognize a person or event close to the time of your birth. Queen Liliuokalani, her middle name is Kamakameha (“sore eye”) because when she was born her aunt had an eye infection. The names don’t need to be pretty, they’re to remember people.

I have a friend, Mahue Matekino (he’s from New Zealand), his name is an inoa hoʻomanaʻo and his name means “the one forgotten”—‘mahue’ means forgotten, and ‘matekino’ means death/dead, like a body… it relates to cancer, and he was named that because two weeks before he was born, his grandpa died of cancer, so he was the forgotten grandchild because he didn’t get to meet his grandpa… It’s really sad, but to Mahue it’s not sad, because you get to remember the best—the name physically ties you to that person.

And we have inoa pō, and the inoa pō actually kind of relates to having a dream, but not strictly. It doesn’t necessarily need to come in a dream, but this name is in honor of the `aumakua, and can sometimes be given by the `aumakua in the form of a dream.

There’s a lot of names in Hawaiian that are not pretty, but nowadays everybody just wants fricken’ pretty names… (less legit)

Then there’s ‘mo ka piko,’ and this name is given in contempt to anyone who has been rude to the family or rude to one of the chiefs. And, I guess that because they strongly believe that what your name entails are the traits you’re gonna inherit—it’s very common if you have this name to be very protective of the family or chief (inoa kuamuamu). ‘Inoa aloha aliʻi’ is “to remember a beloved chief.” Ākeamakamae (my sister) almost had an inoa aloha aliʻi.

The other chant, a mele ma`i, is a “genetalia chant,” as weird as it sounds, and that one is for the main purpose of procreation—a lot of ali`i (chiefs) would have it, would have one done for them—to spiritually influence them to procreate. And for the child, a mele ma`i explains how you came about and that this is what you need to do and why it’s important. It’s not so much the numbers of people that’s important, but they need the tradition to keep going, that’s why it’s important. When one kupuna (grandparent) dies, they need a baby to be born to “counteract” it, in a way.

 

ʻahaʻaina palala

This is the celebration after the child’s made one year, counted from birth (not conception). And then this is a celebration of the child surviving, which doesn’t have as many embedded traditions other than the physical ceremony where everyone celebrates the child passing the critical year mark. Usually this celebration is a lūʻau, a huge family gathering with traditional food, dance, music, and chants. A lot of preparation goes into the lūʻau and literally everyone comes because the first birthday is such a big deal.

 

How did you come across this folklore: “I’m in a Hawaiian Studies class called Hawaiian `Ohana, and we learn about the traditional family system from a particular area on the Big Island, and we chose this place because there’s a lot of history and traditional values that have been maintained from ancient times, which isn’t common around the rest of the islands in the state.”

Other information: “This is one of the most important ceremonies and traditions in the collection. When you’re born is a huge event, but coming of age—it happens when people have their baby’s first lu`au—it’s a ceremony that comes with it. Your first year is critical if you’re gonna make it, so it’s a big deal. That’s when the baby’s diet changes, when you start accepting that the baby’s gonna grow and be part of the community and stuff… but birth, naming, taking responsibility, etc. is a related ceremony all by itself.”

These ceremonies ritualize the transition from gestation to birth, and from birth to infancy in the life cycle. As my informant mentioned, even though the child is very young, this is kind of like a coming of age ceremony, when the baby essentially becomes a real person and therefore part of the community. Naming the baby officiates his/her presence in a family, which is marked by other parts of the ceremony, such as dedicating the baby to the family ‘aumakua, and is when parents/family members decide to acknowledge the baby and to take responsibility for him/her, to nurture and care for him/her.

“Hotchkiss Seniors”

Nationality: Chinese, Manchurian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Plymouth, Minnesota
Performance Date: April 17th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

There are separate things for juniors about to be seniors, and then for seniors about to graduate.

Juniors becoming seniors, we did senior dinner. It’s not super memorable or anything… First, all the girls get really dressed up and we take pictures on senior grass. We all just get assigned tables set up on the senior grass, each table with one faculty member and we all eat dinner… and there’s a couple of student performances, like dances/singing, that kind of thing… It’s happy; it’s basically the formal event where everyone gets stoked to be seniors…

When it’s the night before graduation, the graduating seniors do confessions and senior streaking.

We sit in a bigger room together and have “confessions,” where everyone can just say what they wanna say. We’re in this big room in a circle, and everyone takes a turn presenting whatever it is they wanted to say. It can be a confession, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be anything someone needs to get off their chest before graduating. And everyone sits around and listens, surprisingly respectfully. Then right after the confession is when we do senior streaking…

Senior streaking—so everyone runs around butt naked. It’s very bizarre. Everyone (participants aka seniors, and spectators aka everyone else) just kind of knows it’s gonna happen, but they just pretend like it’s not… And then we get on senior grass—we have a patch of grass that’s just for seniors—and then we take off all our clothes together, at the same time, then we all run in a loop around campus together, like by every dorm… and everybody else in the dorms is watching. And then once we’re done with that loop, we all go back to our respective dorms. And it’s awkward because everyone has seen us naked now… but it’s the night before graduation, so the question of “who cares?” is already implied.

 

How did you come across this folklore: “This is a boarding school tradition, but I don’t know if it’s just Hotchkiss that does it.”

Other information: “I don’t know how people find out about these, but they’re some of those things where your participation is mandatory and somehow you manage to a) find out about it in time, and b) go through with it, maybe because you just have to.”

This is another senior ritual, of which there are probably a virtually infinite amount, that emphasizes the liminal period between seniors and non-seniors, between high school and the “real world.” During this time period, it becomes more acceptable to do things that are otherwise tabooized in society (for example, streaking…), leniency toward seniors increases, and they are able to bond through crossing these societal boundaries.

Dia de los Muertos

Nationality: Mexican, Afro-Caribbean, Native (South) American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Prosser, Washington
Performance Date: April 13th, 2013
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

When we made the offerings for Dia de los Muertos, we left out water. I asked other families, and they told me you customarily leave oranges, and bread, and you leave salt in the shape of a cross to symbolize something good for the returning dead. You also light a candle for each person that had died in your family, so they could find their way back to you during the festival of the dead… I have all of these aunts and random people, tons of them, on my mom’s side, and eight on my dad’s side, so it was a lot of candles. But I didn’t understand about the water, so I asked my dad for the explanation…

Water represents light, like a lighthouse, leading them (the dead), asking them, showing them the way like a beacon, making sure they go to the right house.

Also you’re not allowed to put out the candles, they HAVE to die out themselves. But as for the water, dad said that if you saw bubbles in it the next morning, you know that they visited… I believed it as a kid, but I’m pretty sure it always had bubbles, no matter what…

 

How did you come across this folklore: “I refer to these as “sketchy stories from my (step)father”/sketchy things he did when I was a kid…”

Other information: “My dad has a lot of stories like these, but my mom was big on not sharing them, or letting us hear them—so I heard this in my teens, when were allowed (finally) to ask and he would actually answer… my mom said it would invite bad people/things to us or something…”

This ritual is almost like a more spiritual version of what kids are taught to do for Santa, leaving out cookies the night of Christmas Eve and in the morning there would be bitemarks or crumbs as evidence that he had visited. But Dia de los Muertos is not quite as commercialized of a holiday, and unlike Christmas, offers another opportunity to connect with the dead.

“Ya Sui Qian”

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 29th, 2013
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

So there is a tradition in China: Elder generations will give lucky money to younger generations during the Chinese Lunar New Year. The reason why parents choose to give their offspring lucky money come from a story as follows:

A long time ago, there was a monster named “Sui.” It came out every New Year’s Eve to touch little children’s heads when they were in deep sleep. Whoever being touched would had a fever the next morning, and would become idiots when the fever had gone…

There was a family who got their only son in their late years. So both of the parents loved their son a lot and were afraid that “Sui” would came to their son on New Year’s Eve. On New Year’s Eve, in order to prevent “Sui” from coming to their house, parents decided to play with their son till very late. They gave their son a piece of red paper and eight coins to play with. The boy wrapped the coins and unwrapped them, until he was tired and went to sleep. Later that night, “Sui” came to their house eventually. Wind blew out the candle, and “Sui” was about to touch on their son’s head. The moment when “Sui” extended its arm, the bronze coins in the red paper shone with brilliant light, and “Sui” was so scared that it escaped out of the house faster than the light. Other villagers learned the story, and they chose to follow the same thing that the family had done. No single child was touched by “Sui” and got fever thereafter, and that’s why Chinese people now still keep the tradition to give their children “Ya Sui Qian”–literally meaning the money to prevent “Sui” from coming during the Chinese New Year, which is also called “lucky money.”

 

How did you come across this folklore: “When I was in the elementary school, my Chinese teacher tried to explain what “Sui” means in Chinese, which means “one year.” Then she expanded the word with some phrases and Chinese traditions to help us better understand the meaning.”

Other information: “And this story was part of her explanation of “Sui” –marks one year in the Chinese lunar calendar with all kinds of related folklore.”

Lucky money is clearly a protective measure… in this story used by parents to prevent their children from becoming idiots. But as a whole, this story also represents the way that one word (“Sui”) can encapsulate not just a direct translation, but an entire story and is strongly tied to a tradition.

 

She Wants the D

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/26/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian

I asked my informant to provide a tradition or saying and he gave this:

“Okay, there are… certain sayings amongst articulate men that go along the lines of: “She wants the D.” What this “she wants the D” means is basically if she does something, which is arbitrary, I mean, you could put anything, then she wants the D.”

The informant revealed that he hears most of the “she wants the D” variations he knows in his fraternity. He also indicated the use of such vernacular is most common among the Greek System. However, given that I gathered this piece of folklore from my informant while he was working out at the gym, associations between working out and masculinity may have influenced his decision to narrate this particular piece of folklore, and to embellish its masculine elements.