Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Foodways – Mexican

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 33
Occupation: IT Manager
Residence: Westlake, Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Conversational French

The informant learned the following Mexican foodways from her father’s great-aunt, who was Mexican.

She and her twin sister would make stovetop buttered tortillas and the family would make flatbreads and have tamales at Christmas: “There were little things that we would do when we were younger, um, like take a tortilla, put it on the oven [stove], uh, which had an open flame as opposed to most now that are just electric and just warm it up on there and put butter on it and eat it, uh, which I don’t see anyone do these days, but I remember definitely growing up doing little things like that. Making flatbreads, um . . . lots of peasant food, I guess you would call it for, you know, growing up in a big family in Southern California with slightly, slightly, um, slightly ethnic spin on things . . . I mean, my dad’s side of the family definitely, um, Mexican, Spanish, uh, foods that I would—they would make, like, um, tamales and stuff around Christmas time.”

The buttered tortillas were an anytime snack, but baking flatbread was special and tamales were a Christmas treat.

The informant describes the making of the tamales as “way complicated and a little boring . . . but they were good.”

The informant and her sister, as children of a cross-cultural marriage, inhabited a liminal space so far as traditional foodways went. The tortillas, clearly, have roots in the Hispanic tradition, but putting butter on them seems like a purely American way to eat bread. The informant seems to have rejected her ethnic childhood diet, as she calls it “peasant food,” which has a negative connotation. Alice Guadalupe Tapp, another Southern California resident with Mexican ancestry, writes about the tradition of having tamales at Christmas in her cookbook Tamales 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Making Traditional Tamales, mentioning that her family sometimes made more than 600 tamales for the winter holidays (9).

Source:

Guadalupe Tapp, Alice. Tamales 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Making Traditional Tamales. New York: Ten Speed, 2002.

Stanford Tradition

Nationality: American
Age: 50s
Occupation: Drama Teacher
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/23/11
Primary Language: English

The informant is a caucasian female in her 50s. She was born in Southern California to an upper middle class family. The informant was raised presbyterian, but now professes to follow no religion. She attended Stanford University and then settled back in Los Angeles. She works part-time as a high school drama teacher. The informant is married with one child.

The informant learned about this tradition from her mother, who also attended Stanford University. As a freshman, the informant decided to act out the tradition. She asked a senior, whom she had never met before, if he would participate in the ritual with her. She dressed up in romantically ripped clothes, wore ribbons in her hair, and gathered a group of her friends to join her, witness the ritual, and take pictures. She planned to send a picture to her mother as a joke. While she did get the picture taken, she never actually kissed the senior while under the arch, because she was too nervous to do so in public. This, however, resulted in her meeting her future husband. The two married within a year of this event and have been together for over 30 years.

Text:

There is a Stanford tradition that a woman going to the school can become an official “Stanford” woman by being kissed by a Stanford boy in his senior year under the Memorial Arch, in front of the Memorial Church, under the fool moon, at midnight. The woman can participate in the ritual at any point in her academic career but the man must be a senior.

Analysis: This story has become a legend in the informant’s family. The tradition itself is interesting, as it was passed down through a generation, but the informant’s individual experience has become the most important as it is the story of how she met her husband. Her performance of this story is interesting as it changes every time she tells it, depending on the audience and situation. When she started telling this story to her young daughter, she downplayed the sexual aspect and focused on the tradition and chance meeting of her husband. To friends the informant focuses on the ridiculousness of her ripped and beribboned garb and her audacity at asking an an older, complete stranger to kiss her in front of an audience. The informant is an active bearer, constantly telling stories. She is generally called upon to entertain at gatherings with her stories. Probably a contributory factor of her success as a bearer of lore is her ability to adapt stories to audiences and situations. Her variations on stories also mean that her audience can hear the same story more than once without becoming bored and that she can retell the same story with animation, as it is actually a slightly different story with each telling.

Marching Song

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Oregon
Performance Date: 11 April 2011
Primary Language: English

“I left my wife in 1712

On the verge of starvation

Without a piece of gingerbread,

Did I do right? Right?

Right for my country,

Right for myself?

I managed a store,

Bought a new home,

By Jove, but I left, left…”

?Marching Song

Morgan’s mother learned this marching song from friends at a Girl Scout Camp in Northern Virginia around the year 1965 and it has been in her family ever since. When I first heard it, I was a little surprised at the content of a Girl Scout marching song. After some consideration though, I realized that it makes sense. This would not be the first time a military-style marching song has been adopted into a children’s song- for example, the “I pledge allegiance to the flag…” rhyme featured on page 91 of Elliott Oring’s Folk Groups and Folklore Genres. A brief web search revealed that this particular song exists in many forms, both as a military chant and a children’s marching song, with the unifying characteristics being that in each version, the soldier has left (“left…left…”) his wife and a number of children behind with little to no food.

This song seems to have existed at least since World War I, and earlier versions of it do not include the second half. Instead, they all say something along the lines of “Left, Left/I left my wife and [x] children/ to go and fight a war/ I left,” which makes sense given the propensity of Americans at the time to consider patriotism and the duty to one’s country a higher calling than the duty to oneself (or family). In the 1965 version, however, something is different and that is what I find so interesting. The speaker did not go off to fight a war. He went to start a new life without his wife and children and he continually questions (in marching rhythm) “Did I do right?”

In 1965, The United States was 10 years into the Vietnam War, with 10 years still to go. It appears that, given the atmosphere of fatigue and uncertainty at the time, a traditional military marching song turned children’s song was modified to convey the perspective of a draft dodger who started a new life away from his family. But why choose the year 1712? Obviously, there is no one answer. It could be a reference to the New York Slave Uprising, which happened on April 6, 1712 or the War of Spanish Succession, which Great Britain was involved in until 1714. It is also possible that the year was chosen arbitrarily. What is significant is the way the sentiment of the American people during the years of the Vietnam war was able to reach a Girl Scout camp in Northern Virginia and create a lasting piece of folklore.

Folk Belief – Ireland

Nationality: Irish
Performance Date: 11 April 2011
Primary Language: English

Eimear learned this tradition from her mother (who learned it from Eimear’s grandmother) and has since gotten into the habit of doing it herself.
“I’m Irish, and there’s an old “piseog” [superstition] that if you take a piece of straw from the church manger scene at Christmas and put it in your purse, you won’t have money problems for that year. You’re also not supposed to spend any money on New Year’s Day, because it means you’ll be paying for things the whole year…I’ve asked my mother and she says she’s not sure where the straw tradition came from (although I see plenty of old ladies in Dublin doing it every year, so it’s not just a family superstition), but her mother told her not to spend money on New Year’s Day. My grandmother was born in Belfast and moved to Dublin when she was a child. My grandfather was born in Clare and moved to Dublin as an adult. I get the impression that my grandmother was very close to his family, so it’s as likely she picked it up from them as from her own.”

This superstition is interesting because it reflects the widely held idea that a new year represents a new beginning financially, personally, etc. Americans make resolutions for the New Year, often related to prosperity and during the Chinese New Year, red envelopes containing money are given to children and unmarried/unemployed adults [http://www.history.com/topics/chinese-new-year-traditions-and-symbols].
The tradition of taking the straw from the church manger also reflects the strong presence of Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant, as both often feature nativity scenes of pageants in the church at Christmastime) that still holds in Irish culture. It even permeates a holiday that is not traditionally religious, New Year’s Day, and is incorporated into New Year traditions because it is so ingrained as a part of daily life.

Folk Belief – Ireland

Nationality: Irish
Performance Date: 12 April 2011
Primary Language: English

“In Ireland, when you sneeze, someone’s supposed to say “Dia linn” – literally “God be with us”, fairly standard stuff. But if you sneeze more than once, you have to follow up with a whole load of saints. Usually it goes “Dia lin – Dia ‘s Muire linn – ‘s Padraig, ‘s Seamus, ‘s Brid… (Mary, Patrick, James, Bridget)” and then you need to start getting creative. I am prone to sneezing fits, and have occasionally caused my mother to run out of saints.”

This tradition not only reflects the strong Christian tradition present in Ireland, but shares similarities with the English “God bless you!” and the German “Gesundheit!” (literally “healthy-hood” [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gesundheit] or, less literally “To your health!”
All three reflect general well-wishes toward the individual as he or she experience the minor trauma that is a sneeze, as well as the hope that nothing more serious than a sneeze is approaching.