Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Tashlikh

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a tradition practiced by my informant every Jewish New Year, in Paolos Verdes.

“Instead of going to services, family will go to our local cliff spot and we’ll take a blanket and sit and mom or dad will bring an envelope carrying all of our previous years lettesr and we’ll open them and read all of them to ourselves and become familiar with what our previous years goals were, did we meet them, and we’ll talk to each other about that. And then we’ll get a piece of paper and a pen and we’ll spend some time writing out things that we wish had gone differently, how we would have changed them, and what we wish for the new year. And then we go around and share those if we want, and we seal it. And then we’ll take a couple rocks and think about all the things that we didn’t like about this past year, and following the Jewish tradition where you throw bread, we throw the rocks and “let go” of all the things we felt sad about, or guilty for, or disagreed with in the past year.”

This is a version of the Jewish tradition tashlikh, in which Jews cast bread into the sea to symbolically cast aside their sins from the previous year. It is inscribed in a passage in the book of Micah, 7:18-20, which states “You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea”. The use of letters and sharing would ensure careful thought and consideration, both personally and among the entire family. The substitution of rocks for bread could be for the ready availability of rocks on a cliff face, but it also might be more healing to throw something heavy as symbolic of sin.

 

Dance Shakeout

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a ritual performed by my informant’s dance team prior to every performance. The team would stand in a circle and the team captain would select a number, generally 10 or 15. The girls would start to shake their right hand in the air at the wrist, counting up from one to the number previously selected by the captain. Once they had shaken that hand that many times, they would switch to the left hand and repeat the process. Then the right foot, then the left. Then they would return to the right hand and shake that one fewer times than the previous shake, and the ritual would continue on. Each round would be counted slightly louder than the previous. When it got down to where you only shook every hand and foot once, all of the girls would either do a pre-decided cheer or simply jump up and down yelling to prepare them for their performance, and then go out onstage.

This is a very common warmup exercise in many performing arts; it is described in the book Acting Antics: A Theatrical Approach to Teaching Social Understanding to Kids and Teens with Asperger’s Syndrome (29), and was also mentioned to me by another informant from Georgia before her dance competitions. It’s important because it loosens the muscles after stretching them and honing focus, and it is done together in a circle to encourage the connection between the performers before they go onstage. It increases in volume to either release some of the tension or egg it on, throwing into a constructive use. The cheer or scream at the end fosters team unity and spirit, and prepares the team to go out and perform.

Camp Song

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

“The final campfire, we would sing a song, well, it’s been a while so I forget how it goes, but so our camp was on one side of the lake and on the other side of the lake was a Jesus camp. Apparently that’s what it was called, I dunno, but that’s what we called it. We kind of liked to mess with them a little bit, I dunno if we thought that we were better or something, but it was just a fun thing to do for us during camp. And so what we were singing about was really, I mean it wasn’t malevolent at all it was just a fun camp song, but the last line of the song was “AND NOW HE’S DEAD”* and we would just scream it across the lake. And we had all this fire, so, it would look at all scary.”

*At this line, all of the campers would shake their arms up in the air.

This was a custom enacted by the children at my informant’s camp. It always occurred at the end of the summer, a last huzzah of sorts. The religious camp across the lake was different from the camp my informant attended; it’s possible that there was something of a rivalry, or perhaps they just didn’t get along, but the screamed last line was a definite intentional goading. More importantly, though, it’s a tradition at the camp that unites the campers against the ‘others’ across the lake, and most likely played into numerous jokes at the other camp’s expense. It would be done on the final night to re-cement this impression and the unity among the campers before they had to disperse, ending the period of the summer to start a new one.

A Cookie A Day

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12th, 2013
Primary Language: English

This is a joke passed on in the family of my informant, and dates back to his grandfather. It plays on the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. His father would have a cookie for breakfast every day, saying that he didn’t need a doctor or an apple and that he would rather have a cookie. He died in his fifties from heart complications.

This has now become a joke in their family; every time someone feels ill, a family member would recommend that the person start eating cookies for breakfast, and gave rise to the adapted saying in their family that “a cookie a day keeps the doctor away”.

Christmas in Kentucky

Nationality: American
Age: 58
Occupation: Programmer
Residence: Carlisle, MA
Performance Date: 3/19/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: French

Informant Bio: Informant is my mother.  She was born in West Virginia and spent her childhood moving around the country, eventually settling in Massachusetts.  She was exposed to many different traditions as she moved around the country as a child and still carries some with her to this day.

 

Context: I was interviewing my mother about traditions, stories and rituals she remembers from her childhood.

 

Item: “Our family was spread out across the US and Christmas was the one time that everybody went back home to be together, back in the Kentucky hills.  As a child I loved being with my many cousins.  It was a fantastic time.  We generally stayed with my paternal grandparents.    My grandmother woke up early Christmas morning and started preparations for the large Christmas breakfast.  Always consisting of biscuits, gravy, fried potatoes, eggs, sausage, fried apples and for the kids, my favorite – hot molasses and peanut butter sopped up with a biscuit!  After breakfast, the children opened presents.  Then my grandmother began the Christmas dinner.  They had a huge table; yet, the kids ate in the kitchen.  Actually, you were allowed to eat at the grown up table after you turned 13.  It was sad for me, when my older cousins left the kitchen table!  Dinner was incredibly good.  My grandmother and mom were terrific cooks.  After dinner in the afternoon, the kids got to play with the toys.  Then we began visiting other families in the community”.

 

Analysis: The Christmas breakfast was the first moment that all of the family members got to be together for; it was a celebration of the family being back together again.  The informant remembered the food the most vividly, maybe because the meals proved to be the most memorable times (when everyone was gathered around tables seated next to each other).

 

The fact that the children had to sit at a separate table until they were thirteen shows how, in the U.S., society truly separates childhood from adulthood.  With different schools, laws, and expectations, children do not get to have the privilege of a full life experience until they are old enough.  Thirteen years old seems a little young for the transition when compared to the voting age of 18, drinking age of 21 and other “marking” periods that occur much later in ones life, but, thirteen does represent a time in which most people have at least begun to hit puberty (and thus moved on from being a true child).

 

Christmas seemed to be a period of time that was sacrosanct.  Nobody missed it and it was a time when everyone came together.  The children were the ones who exchanged gifts while the adults merely treasured it as a time to be around their loved ones and catch up.  Despite the religious nature of the holiday, Church/religion does not seem to play a significant role in the informant’s celebration.