Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Pi Day

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pasadena, CA
Performance Date: April 22, 2013
Primary Language: English

On March 14th, Mayfield Senior School celebrates Pi Day. It plays upon the fact that the math calculation of pi equals around 3.14. On Pi Day each of the math class’ students are served slices of pie. Students usually have a variety of type of pies to choose from such as cherry or apple. Along with eating pie, the students partake in contests to see which student can get closest to the accurate calculation. The accurate calculation of pi can pass ten figures and can be quite challenging. Students also race each other to see who can solve equations the quickest, usually involving trigonometry.

This is a great way to get students excited about math and partaking in trigonometry. Pi is a mathematical constant, 3.14 being the three most significant digits. Pi Day is mostly celebrated in educational institutions, particularly math classes. This tradition has been ongoing in the Mayfield history.

Christmas Gift from the Heart

Nationality: Estonian Canadian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student; Sales Associate
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: March 10, 2013
Primary Language: French
Language: English; Spanish

My informants’ family is filled with artists. The father is a cinematographer, photographer, and painter. The mother sculpts, creates installations and writes poetry. My informant, the eldest, is majoring in photography at NYU and also dances. The youngest of the family is a painter and drawer and attends LACSA. The parents have encouraged and supported their daughters’ interest in the visual arts the day they were born. The parents exemplify their value of art by upholding the tradition that all of the family’s Christmas presents must be created by the giver and must be some kind of art. For example, last year, my informant gave her father a framed photograph that he had especially expressed high regard for. The mother gave her an abstract sculpture of Santa Claus. When learning that most parents give their kids gifts from stores, my informant  said that she though it was completely strange. She wondered how a child could love and want something so uncreative and cold.

Russian death custom

Nationality: Russian
Age: 20
Occupation: Actuary/student
Residence: Troy, Michigan
Performance Date: 3/28/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

“In Russia, when someone dies, you leave an empty spot at the table. Then you pour one shot glass of vodka and put a piece of bread over the glass. This makes it like they’re still with you and you’re still making room for them in your home.”

Like the informant said, after death, the deceased person still is a part of the lives of the living. The people remember the person through leaving food, which is inherently is meant to sustain you physically, though in case it sustains the person spiritually. According to PBS, the bread on top of the glass is black, and its a ‘reversal of the traditional Russian custom of breaking black bread when meeting someone for the first time.’ Therefore, though the living are temporarily memorializing the dead with the food, they are also saying goodbye for the last time.

Citation: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/onourownterms/articles/cultural.html

How to find treasure in Lebanon

Nationality: Lebanese
Age: 20
Occupation: Architecture student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 5/1/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic/Lebanese

“There’s the treasure thing, it’s pretty uncommon, and I don’t know how accurate it is cause I heard it from someone in Lebanon. So we were up in the mountains in Lebanon and there was a huge boulder on the ground that had a cylinder bored out of it, um, and my cousin asked me if I knew what it was, and of course, I didn’t and he told me that up in the mountains of Lebanon, there’s not a lot of people who come to visit there so it’s like a barren landscape type of thing. So, um, people hide their treasure in the mountains, so in order to locate the treasure back, they would bore large holes into boulders, assuming the boulder wouldn’t move. And the way the bores showed you which way your treasure was, you would pour water into the void you made into the boulder, and as the water overflowed out, it has to spill out in some direction, and the direction that the water spills out in is the direction you buried your treasure. So if you were to follow that water on its journey in that direction, eventually you would find your treasure.”

This is like an occupational custom, in the sense that the custom is tied to one action and one kind of person who is a treasure hunter. If a stranger was walking by, it would take a good deal of intuition to first realize that it is a device, figure out what its use is for and how to use it. It is also a clever way to adapt to the natural landscape of Lebanon.

USC Fountain Run

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Here the informant describes USC’s tradition of the Senior fountain run, and what it means conceptually to the USC community:

     Every year the seniors go on a fountain run, where they run through every fountain on campus. So every year the seniors of USC go on this fountain run, where they run through every fountain on campus, and they just get wasted, and they carry around, like, squirt guns full of tequila and handles and all this crazy stuff, and they dress in like the most ridiculous costumes, and its just kind of like a way for all the seniors to say goodbye to campus and like celebrate the end of their four years here and kind of leave their mark in terms of USC.

     I’ve heard about this tradition through my own personal experience: in having witnessed it and followed seniors around who needed help, and also, just through, like, you know, grandparents and parents talking about how, like, they did their fountain run several years ago, or not several…  decades ago! And it’s just pretty amazing It’s still a tradition today.

 

As can be seen from her impassioned description, the fountain run and USC’s traditions in general, mean a lot to both the informant and a great deal of USC’s community. With the fountain run having been practiced for decades, it is now an integral part of USC lore. As the informant says, it is an opportunity for bonding, and she claims to have been one of the students who follow the seniors help those who need it. Given the familial nature of this event, she too told me she will undoubtedly take part in this tradition her senior year, and expects to be followed by underclassmen then, just as she followed the seniors as a freshman.