My informant told me about capillas, which are little chapels that people build above the ground where a person is buried. Usually they put cement there first, so the ground above the grave doesn’t get dirty. Then they can put gifts like flowers or candles inside of it. They’re constructed as a way to honor the dead. As my informant said, if you don’t have a landmark above the grave as a reminder, you may forget that person is there. He said his mother’s side of his family is thinking of building one over his uncle Basilio’s grave, because he is only one in his mother’s immediate family who has died, and there are cement and bricks over his grave, but no capilla yet. Based on this and other information my informant shared with me, honoring the dead and honoring family is highly important to him in his culture. It seems as though the dead are not simply buried and forgotten, but they still play a significant role in the lives of the living.
Category Archives: Customs
Spanish Funeral Celebration
We celebrate the death, well not the death, but a celebration of that person’s life. You know how here you wear black, you have a little get together, it’s very quiet, you can’t make jokes and it’s inappropriate if you do. Where in my family and culture you bring in a big mariachi and a banda, and you play and drink. The banda is literally a band and they have trombones, clarinets, and guitars…um, and basically you drink and get super fucked up until 2 or 3 in the morning. Or sometimes until the sun comes back up. And you make really good food and you just remember their life. I mean, you’re kind of talking about the person the whole time, for example you dedicate songs to them, and you’re just like, “this is for you, fucker! You fucking bastard, you owe me three dollars!” (laughs) You talk a lot about dumb shit they did or as a kid how stupid they were. It’s never like, “we miss them.” Although…the mother is usually crying…afterward you visit their capilla – if you build one – on the anniversary they died.
These funeral customs have similarities to Irish funerals. Like most funerals, it’s about the loss of a loved one, but instead of being somber, sad, and quiet like most Americans are during funerals, they cope with the loss through celebrating that person’s life. Clearly there’s still sadness – the mother usually being the one crying – but by celebrating, drinking, and telling stories about their lost loved one, they possibly have a stronger outlet for their emotions and are able to deal better with their grief.
New Year’s Day Superstition
Every year when my informant would celebrate New Year’s with her family, they would have a rule on the first day of the year. Nothing was allowed to leave the house. They couldn’t take out the trash, take an item to a friend, nothing. Her parents told her it was about not starting off the year with a loss; what has been accumulated in the last year should be preserved. If the rule is broken, it is said that the new year will go poorly and the family will have bad luck. When the family really needed to take something out of the house, though, sometimes they would allow it as long as something else was brought into the house first to balance it out.
My informant said she always kind of resented the rule because she didn’t see the point of it and it inconvenienced her. She followed it to please her family, though, and admitted sometimes it was fun because it was something the family all did. In that way, it was a bonding experience.
I’d never heard of the superstition before but I think it’s interesting how it gives special importance to the first day of the year, as if what happens on that day will affect the whole year. Also interesting is the idea that physically keeping items in the house will mean a preservation of less tangible accomplishments and gains made in the previous year.
Birthday ear pulling in Italy
My informant grew up in Italy, where there was a tradition that on someone’s birthday, his friends would pull on his ears once for each year he was old. He speculated that this could be because of a belief that the ears are associated with memory and so pulling them might make one better remember life as it passed them by. The other possible explanation he offered was that because earlobes grow as a person grows, this ritual of pulling them might be to wish a person a longer life.
It was never actually a tradition he particularly liked because he found it physically uncomfortable, but it reminds him of the time he spent in Italy growing up before coming to America. It also makes him remember the friends he had there as a kid and the birthday parties he used to have with them.
Personally, I would readily accept either of his suggestions for the meaning of this ritual. Otherwise, it could just be a thing children made up to annoy each other; it reminds me of the punch for each year birthday tradition in America. Maybe it’s used then as a painful/bothersome initiation into the next year of your life. Once you get past it, you come out better for having gone through the experience. I like his explanations better, though.
Vietnamese Full Moon
Transcribed Text:
“A full moon is like good luck. Cuz like the way they see it, it lights up their night.”
The informant is a student at the University of Southern California. The informant says she learned this folk belief from her parents when she was younger and visiting Vietnam. She says that contrast to American belief that a full moon is bad, as it is often associated with werewolves, she says a full moon in Vietnam is good luck because in their perspective, a full moon lights up the night. She thinks it’s interesting how the two folk beliefs completely contrast each other in the two cultures with which she has grown up in. It is interesting how different folklore can be across regions, even when they are basing their beliefs on the same object; in this case, the moon. Many cultures have very different interpretations and beliefs about things such as the moon. Each culture bases their calendar on a different cycle or different concept. In Vietnamese culture, they base their calendar on the lunar cycle, which could be a large reason why the full moon is a very positive and big deal there, as they even have the Full Moon Festival in the fall, according to the informant. In contrast, Western culture focuses more on the solar cycle for the calendar, which could be why the moon isn’t represented in a positive way.