Category Archives: Game

The Fort of Christmas Cheer

Nationality: Irish, Scottish, French, German
Age: 19
Occupation: Student at USC
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 03.02.2016
Primary Language: English

Original Script: “When I was younger, after Christmas…probably about two or three days after Christmas, me, my dad, my sister, and my brother, would collect Christmas trees for a Christmas tree fort. We would wait till people started to leave Christmas trees out in their drive ways, and we would go and drive around our neighborhood in our big car, with rope, and tie the Christmas trees to the back of our car, and make a couple rounds, so we were dragging the trees. We would have over 20 trees, sometimes more, and he would create a perimeter in our backyard of rope and lean the trees against the rope and then put them on their sides to make an infrastructure of different rooms and hallways, and he would stack the trees on top of each other so their would be a roof. Me, my brother, and sister and would crawl into the rooms and trim the trees to make the rooms bigger. We would sometimes spy on the neighbors through the fort, with binoculars. And when they came over we would throw berries at them. It was huge, basically we would declare war on neighbors, sometimes we would let other kids play in it. When it was time to throw the trees out, we would put them outside our house—it basically covered up the whole driveway.”

Background Information about the Piece by the informant: Jessica Patrick grew up in a predominantly Irish household. Celebrating Christmas every year with her family. Now that the kids are older–her and her brother in college and her younger sister a junior in high school—they do not do the tradition as much as they use to do it when they were little. While everyone in the household did celebrate Christmas—it was usually the father, Jessica, and her siblings that did the fort building.

Context of the Performance: Past Christmas traditions celebrated in Dallas, Texas with all the children in Jessica’s family.

Thoughts about the piece: After interviewing Jessica, I found it interesting how I have never heard/seen anything from this tradition before. While it is not necessarily a representation of heritage, it is a mode of activity that represents the past and has interesting motifs about the past—which is also considered tradition. For example, the building of a fort (a house) made out of entirely logs, the kids helping the father build the house, even the kids acting that the fort was their home—even though they had a perfectly acceptable house—with a heater—was all representations of the past. It also represents that of a celebration in a narrative format: the tree hunting being the ritual, the playing in the house being the main event, and the taking apart of the fort and putting the trees in the front yard would be the closing ceremony. Furthermore, I believe this event represents a classic “American Dream”(commonly known as the Horatio Alger myth) building a home for oneself, a dream, out of nothing. This tradition can also be correlated to group identity, especially with the practicing of the ritual and the exclusion to other groups: “sometimes we would let other kids play in it.”

Sespe Ouija Ghost

Age: 20
Residence: Los Angeles, CA / Carmel, CA
Performance Date: 4/20/16
Primary Language: English

TO is a student at the University of Southern California, and current president of SC Outfitters, the student-run outdoors club.

TO shared an Ouija board encounter with me that took place on her first retreat:

“We were backpacking for our first guide retreat in the Sespe Wilderness near Ojai, and someone decided to bring an Ouija board. My friend Mac told us that a long time ago, exactly where we were camping, there was a troop of Boy Scouts that got caught in a flash flood and all drowned, so we decided to try and summon them with the Ouija board. We tried to get in contact with them, and the board spelled out “J X I,” which we were convinced meant “Jimmy.” We asked Jimmy if we could talk to him about the afterlife, and he said “no.” We attributed this to him being a young boy who wasn’t allowed to talk to strangers, so we let him go…I slept with a knife under my pillow that night, I was so scared.”

I asked TO if she had been back to that campsite since, and if she remembered hearing or seeing anything unusual.

“I’ve never been back to that specific campsite, no. We’ve done guide retreats in Sespe since but we seem to purposely avoid that campsite…new guides who weren’t there that first year want to go back and try and talk to Jimmy again, but I’m going to say no. I don’t remember seeing anything, but I was so on edge I thought every noise that night was the ghost of a Boy Scout or something.”

My analysis:

Campfire ghost stories are even scarier when they take place where you’re campfire is located, but people seem to enjoy telling these kinds of legends while out in the wilderness. Ouija boards are a fun folk object, but also a terrifying one, used to start and further new or existing ghost stories. TO says whether or not her friend made up the story of Jimmy and the Boy Scouts is uncertain, but her reluctance to return to the campground indicates she at least somewhat believes him. It also turns into a fun story for her to pass down to new generations of guides/members of the club, and possibly something they can one day go back and test, to begin creating their own sort of folklore for the club.

New Years Tradition

Nationality: American - (Greek Cypriot/German/Argentinian)
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: Friday April 22nd, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Greek, Mandarin

A is an 18-year-old woman. She is currently studying Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. She considers her nationality to be American, but more specifically she is one quarter Greek Cypriote, one quarter German and half Argentinian. that being said, she strongly identifies with her Greek roots. She is fluent in both English and Greek, and is currently learning Mandarin.

A: For the New Year, and this is a pretty common thing in a lot of Eastern European countries, but for the New Year we bake like a special like New Years bread/cake thing, um, which is called, um “vasilopita.”

Me: Sorry, could you spell that?

A: Yeah. um, in English, it’s spelled, v-a-s-i-l-o-p-i-t-a.

Me: Perfect.

A: It’s a, direct translation is like King’s bread. Um, there are two different stories I’ve heard. This one, one of them, is that, um, there was like a ransom, like a town was under siege, the robbers demanded a ransom, and like they had to collect like all these family jewels and gold and stuff, and a priest was trying to return it to the family like Ayios (saint) Vassilis, that’s why it’s named after him, um and what he did to smuggle it under the noses of the robbers is he baked all of their goods into a, like, cake. And he was like, this is a cake, like don’t mind me taking this out of the palace. And like the story goes that he like cut all the cake and magically every family like got the right stuff returned to them. So whoever gets the coin in the cake, like their part of the vasilopita, gets good luck for the year.

Me: What’s the other story then?

A: The other one is a very similar story, except it wasn’t he snuck it out from the robbers, the robbers were so like amazed by how like the town came together to give them all the bounty that they like let them have it and then it got baked into a cake. So one of them’s much nicer and the other one’s like funny and sneaky. But that’s like a common myth, ’cause like a lot of greek families do it, um and something, like I don’t know if evryone does this, but like when you cut the cake, first you cut a piece for God, then you cut a piece for Jesus, then you cut a piece for the house, then you start cutting pieces in order of who’s oldest who’s at that New Years celebration.

Me: What happens to the other pieces?

A: You search through them to see if there’s a coin in there. ‘Cause Jesus needs the good luck apparently. Yeah, so you just leave them uneaten, or like you eat them afterwords.

Me: So if God or Jesus or the house gets the coin, then?

A: Then they have the luck. Actually I have yet to ever, well, I had the house get the coin once. Which is fine, ’cause you’re like yay, everyone in the house is going to be lucky.

Me: Oh, okay. I thought it was like the actual foundation of the house.

A: Oh, that would be really funny.

Me: Like the house is lucky. It will not fall victim to any floods…

A: Actually that could be a thing too, like no floods, no earthquakes, like…

Me: Your house will not burn down this year.

A: Yay. Gosh, that’s been just been happening to me so frequently, I could really use the coin. Um, and like sometimes it’s in the uneaten part of the cake, and so you just work though it for the next few days, but it’s yummy. It’s a good cake.

Me: It’s kind of like Mardi Gras and the little baby.

A: Yeah.

Informant A talks about a New Years tradition that she and her family along with many other greek families do on the holiday. She talks about the history of the cake which is called vasilopita and how there is a coin baked into the cake. Whoever finds the coin in their piece of cake gets good luck for the following year. Respect for religion and age are shown in this tradition with the order in which the pieces of cake are cut and distributed. God, Jesus, and the house are included in the tradition and are given priority over the people at the party, pieces are cut for them in the order listed above. The older people at the party are also given priority as the piece are then distributed by age from oldest to youngest. This is much like the tradition of baking a baby into the cake at Mardi Gras and was likely the basis of the Mardi Gras tradition. The priest, Ayios Vassilis, in the story is also the same person that the Greeks use to represent Santa Claus.

Greek Easter

Nationality: American - (Greek Cypriot/German/Argentinian)
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: Friday April 22nd, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Greek, Mandarin

A is an 18-year-old woman. She is currently studying Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. She considers her nationality to be American, but more specifically she is one quarter Greek Cypriote, one quarter German and half Argentinian. that being said, she strongly identifies with her Greek roots. She is fluent in both English and Greek, and is currently learning Mandarin.

A: I have a fun Easter family tradition.

Me: Yeah?

A: It’s kind of Greek Easter thing, but after you paint the eggs you put them in the refrigerator, and after you have Easter dinner, everybody pulls out the eggs, they’re all different colors, you choose an egg of your favorite color, and then you fight each other’s eggs. So you like, you’ll each have an egg and then you like crack it, and whichever egg cracks, loses. And like you do this with different family members until at the end one person is left with an un-cracked egg.

Me: Do they win something?

A: They win like god luck for Easter.

Me: So you pick the one that you painted? Or does someone paint all of the eggs and you choose from those?

A: For me it was always like somebody painted all of them and you picked the one that you want, which for me, I always tried to pick the coldest egg, ’cause it was like the hardest egg. Yeah. I won a lot them when I was younger. So, yeah, that was fun.

A talks about a family tradition which they do every year on Greek Easter. She has fond memories of the tradition as she won many times growing up, also because she laughed and smiled a lot in her interview. Though she does not live in Greece, or more specifically Cyprus, where her grandparents live, she still celebrates the Greek traditions that have been passed down though her family.

Easter Egg Hunting with Siblings

Nationality: Black American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: Friday Aprill 22nd, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

M is a 20-year-old black female who is currently double majoring in NGO’s and Social Change and Communications at the University of Southern California. M grew up in Boston, MA but currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. M primarily speaks English, but she is also fluent in Spanish.

Me: Does your family have any fun holiday traditions?

M: Um. We are aggressive when it comes to Easter baskets. My mom is really happy that my brother aren’t home for Easter anymore because, I think she though she could like stop when I like reached 16, and she had the Easter baskets like out on the table, like you know, like we always do the hunt and then go to church, but she left them out on the table and we came downstairs and we were very upset and we told her she had to hide them, so she did, unfortunately very aggressively. And we didn’t even find them before church, so we had to go, we still didn’t have our baskets, and then it took us another hour and a half to find them when we got home. She was really annoyed. she was like, you’re ll adults you don’t need these, and my sister was…my sister to be fair was only 12, so she was like I am not an adult at all, like I want mine hidden. Then when my mom hid hers, my brother was like I’m only 14 and she was like ok. Then I was like, you can’t hide theirs and not mine. And then that’s when she was like, alright, these bitches… Yeah.

M talks about an annual family tradition of her mom hiding their Easter baskets and candy for her and her two siblings. Their mom thought that when they reached a certain age, that she could stop hiding the eggs, but the children all wanted to keep the tradition going. There was a sense of maturing and distancing from old childhood memories and games that the kids did not yet want to let go of, and so they continued the tradition until they moved out of the house. Not only was the Easter basket hunt fun for the kids, and kept their childhood spirit alive, but it was more time spent with siblings bonding and working together to find their baskets. They will likely carry on the tradition when they have children as it meant so much to them growing up.