Traditional Hawaiians would greet people by pressing their foreheads together and breathing through their noses. Breathing through your nose is considered the purest way to take a breath. Riley’s grandpa would greet him and his siblings and cousins with this traditional greeting. He would bend down and place his forehead against each of their foreheads then take one deep breath through his nose and exhale. It was an intimate way of greeting people to show that you cared for the person and respected him or her beyond words.
In addition, kids were to greet elders or other parents who were outside their family as Uncle or Auntie instead of Mr. or Mrs. It was very disrespectful to call someone by the title of Mr. or Mrs. Riley, for example, would walk into a cookie shop and greet the shop owner as Auntie May, even though she had no family relationship to him.
The use of Auntie and Uncle to address elders most likely was used to represent that all Hawaiians are family, despite of what blood you have. It makes sense with Hawaiian culture to treat everyone who lived on the islands as family because the islands collectively represented one giant family.
Category Archives: Customs
Haft Sín: A Part of the Persian New Year
Contextual Data: I had been hanging out with one of my friends and we got into a conversation about our different cultures and religious backgrounds—he’s a Persian who practices the Baha’i faith. And at one point, he mentioned the Persian New Year, which had just occurred the previous month on March 20th. He grew up in the United States and his whole family (including his grandparents and his extended family) lives here, but they still partake in the these New Years’ traditions. I asked him to tell me more about it — about any specific characteristics or rituals — and the following is an exact transcript of what he described.
“The only ritual I can think of in New Years celebration is the arrangement of what’s called the Haft Sín — Sín is equivalent to the letter “S” in the English alphabet and Haft means “seven.” So what Iranians do in their homes is they create… um…kind of like a banquet of different items beginning with that letter that all have a symbol. Like síb, which means “apple” in Farsi, is a symbol of health and life. And sekhé, which is like a gold coin, is a symbol of wealth. And…um… I think sekhé—No… Seer, which is garlic, is like a symbol of fertility. Or… There’s—There’s like a lot of these different things. I think that there’s apples, there’s goldfish, there’s painted eggs…Yeah. [Laughs.]”
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A few other items that can be a part of the Haft Sín, which my informant later mentioned to me, are: sumac, which is a spice; sír, which is vinegar; sangak, which is wheat bread; and then sometimes a bed of wheatgrass, which the family has grown. When I asked him about what he thought the significance of it was, he replied, “It’s just like, if another Persian came into your house around that time, they would like, look at your Haft Sín and be like ‘Oh, that’s nice’— Kind of like the Christmas tree for Christians, in a way.”
My informant mentioned that in Persian culture, Naw Rúz falls on the first day of spring (usually March 21st), which he says relates to the symbolic idea of spring as “the beginning of life.” So in thinking about Naw Rúz as a celebration of this new life, as well as the liminal nature of the New Year (the in-between phase when people pass from one year to the next), it seems as though the Haft Sín is an important way of ushering in luck for the “new life” ahead — good luck related to health, wealth, fertility, and so on. My friend mentioned that the arrangement varies from family to family, and that the arrangement can exceed seven items, which suggests that it can be a more individual reflection of what a family is hoping to be blessed with in the upcoming year. The arrangement therefore also seems like an important way of bringing together the family.
Given that my informant and his family live in the United States, part of the reason for partaking in this tradition could also be as a means of holding on to their Persian culture.
Annotation: http://www.asia.si.edu/events/nowruz/haft-sin.asp
This offers another description of the Haft Sín table, listing additional items, as well as alternative symbolic meanings to the items. This again alludes to the way that the arrangement can vary from family to family, based on the faith of the family and on what they might be looking forward to in the New Year. Social media also presents a great way to see this variation—searching the hashtag “#haftsin” on Instagram or Tumblr pulls up photos from many different users, illustrating the different ways that Iranian families arrange their tables, as well as what items they include in the arrangement.
Candy Wrapper Doll
Contextual Data: I had a bit of a cough over Spring Break and so I ended up working my way through a packet of cough drops. One day my mother saw me crumpling one and tossing it aside and she mentioned that when she I was little, she had taught me how to make a doll out of those wrappers. I didn’t remember it, so she explained it to me again. Her step-by-step explanation is paraphrased and illustrated with images below.
1. Fold the paper back and forth into thin strips (“like an accordion,” she explained.)
2. Flatten the resulting thin strip.
3. Tie a knot in the strip, not quite halfway through it, but offset (about two-thirds of the way down). The resulting shape should be a sort of triangle.
4. Fan out the smaller top section to create a head and the larger bottom section to create the doll’s skirt.
5. Twist the edges of the smaller portion to create two little ponytails.
After she finished making the doll, I asked my informant where she first learned about it and why she did it. The following is an exact transcript of her response.
“Uh…In school, when we used to get candy. Uh, we… Like how you guys get muffins when there’s somebody’s birthday—the person brings muffins for the whole class, we used to get hard candies wrapped in that foil. So after we’re done eating with the candy, we would play around with it and that’s what we would end up making… It was just something passed around, I guess. From friends.”
My informant attended school in India. When I asked if the boys did anything like that with the wrappers, she mentioned that she attended an all-girls school. Overall, there doesn’t seem to be any particular symbolism to the little craft — they never really grew attached to these dolls; they would throw them away after they were done with them and nobody ever collected them or anything like that (possibly because they were so common and easy to make, and therefore not anything rare or exciting). In general, this therefore just seems like a fun little way that friends played with one another, and it just kind of conjured up everyday memories from my informent’s childhood school days.
Canadian Tradition: Money in the Birthday Cake
Contextual Data: We had gone out to celebrate my friend’s birthday the day before, and just out of curiosity, I asked her if there were any specific ways that her family celebrated her birthday. She mentioned that she was Canadian and there were some specific quirky things that her family did that were part of larger Canadian traditions. I asked her to explain one, and the following is an exact transcript of her response.
“Okay, so I’m Canadian. All my relatives are Canadian. I was born in Canada. Um, and there’s lots of, like, kooky Canadian traditions that after I moved to the States I realized, like, ‘This isn’t something normal people do.’ Like everyone doesn’t do that here, like, American people don’t know what I’m talking about—whatever. So, um, one of the things I had, like, growing up was, um, on my birthday—or all the birthdays in our family, basically—my mom would make, um, a Layer Cake. So it might be, like, a chocolate cake or whatever. Um, in the cake she would put money. And so she would take coins—wash them, obviously [Laughs]—That’s so… You would usually take, like, um—in Canada the money’s sort of like, you have Loonies and Toonies, so dollar coins and two dollar coins, so there would be like a few of those—it’d be like a really big treat. And then there’d be lots of like quarters and nickels and dimes and stuff. And she’d take these and wash them off and wrap them in wax paper [Presses hands together, miming sandwiching coins between two pieces of paper]. And then when the cake was done, she would take the two layers and insert the coins straight through the cake. Um, and then, put the icing over it and cover all the holes, so you didn’t know, like, where the money was. And, um…Also, there would be another little object—we usually used a button. And so that would be in the cake—with the money. And that would be in one piece of the cake, so only one person would get it. And usually, I think, in the tradition—like I know so many. I think like, this isn’t just my family. It’s Canadian—or probably not all of Canada, but like a big tradition where my relatives talked about this when they were little, too. Like my grandparents and stuff. So I think traditionally, like if you get the button or whatever else was in there, um, you’re an old maid. Or like, ‘Bad luck for seven years’ or something. But obviously for us as kids, my mom changed it to like, ‘It’s a birthday! If you get the button you’re lucky!’ And it’s like good luck if you’re the one who didn’t get the money and got the button, and um, yeah. It’s kind of just like a fun way that, um… It was like really easy. It’s not a lot of work to, like, put money in the cake, but it was like really hot—everyone loved it. I remember as a kid, um, after I moved to the States, when, like, I was hanging out with American kids, they were just like, ‘What? Like, I’ve never had money in a cake before. I want my mom to do this.’ And it was kind of… It was cool. It was really cool.”
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When I asked my friend why people might do this, she said that it just kind of seemed like a fun way for people to celebrate a person—it contributes to that air of festivity as everyone walks away from the celebration with a sort of “party favor.”
Part of the reason for performing this tradition, though, also seems to be the element of superstition and the idea of a birthday as a transition into a new year, particularly with the good luck/bad luck surrounding the “other object”; people will either be fortunate or cursed in the upcoming year. In particular, in her family, in which the button is seen as a sign of good luck, this tradition also seems to be a way of encouraging people to look forward to the unknown—they might not know what they’re going to get, but more often than not, it is something fortunate and worthwhile.
She says it is a fun surprise that her family still performs with her younger brother, but part of the reason it has seemed so weird to her American friends is because they point out that it is kind of a choking hazard. She can’t imagine it taking off in America because it is such a litigious society, and the tradition could be seen as one that endangers children, though she thinks that misses the point of it being about the fun, “everybody gets to participate in the celebration” aspect of it.
Indian Wedding: The Groom’s Arrival
Contextual Data: Over Spring Break, my family received an invitation to attend a wedding. I was a bit curious about what it would be like, as I hadn’t been to a wedding — specifically, an Indian wedding — in a really long time and couldn’t remember very much about any wedding traditions. I asked my mother to tell me a bit about Indian weddings and some specific aspects of the weddings that stood out to her. She mentioned the parade that happens when the groom arrives to the venue. The following is an exact transcription of her description.
“The groom is supposed to come… It’s called a barat—B-A-R-A-T — so him and his family are supposed to come to the girl’s house for the wedding. The wedding takes place generally in the girl’s house. And so they come in that procession… The groom is usually on a horseback or something or walking ahead. There’s a band playing in the front first, then the groom is behind—on either a horse or a car or something — and then behind that there are like people dancing. And then… behind that is all — everybody else who…is just walking. It’s usually a short distance. So they set it up such that it’s a short distance from wherever the girl’s family decides to host the wedding. And…uh. That’s what it is. And they come and when they enter the venue (either the house or wherever they’ve set it up) then the groom — the bride’s mother does a pooja, welcoming the groom. And then the bride is supposed to put a… necklace — mala, a flower one — a flower necklace around the groom and the groom does the same I think… Uh. I think so. I think the bride does it… And, at least in our tradition sometimes they make it difficult for the bride to put it, because men are generally taller. So they lift the guy up so it makes it even harder for the girl to do it [Laughs.] That kind of little stuff goes on.”
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When I asked my informant what she thought the significance of these traditions were, she attached no particular symbolic meaning to them. Mainly, she suggested the groom arrives with a parade because he’s essentially coming to take the bride away, and so, he’s arrived with all the accompanying “fanfare” — it’s a way for him to announce himself to the bride’s family.
Additionally, there are certainly symbolic meanings that can be attached to the act of the bride’s family throwing a flower garland around the groom (thinking about concepts of virginity and the term “deflowering”). The fact that the groom’s family might make this difficult by lifting the groom seems to speak to the idea of a wedding as a liminal, transitory state and the importance of being able to complete these rituals properly and wholly in order for the transition to be complete. But beyond this, the parade seems primarily to speak to the fact that weddings are considered special, celebratory, joyous occasions — the parade is what kicks off the wedding with this air of festivity, particularly through the music and the dancing and the fact that it happens in a very public place; this is an important day for the groom and one on which he deserves some attention and which he should be happy for.