Category Archives: Game

A Christmas Pickle

Text:

Talking about Christmas traditions

L: Also, whoever– The way we decided who opens their presents first is that there’s one uhhhh ornament on the tree that is a pickle, and whoever finds it first gets to open the first present.

ME: I heard about this from my friend A!!

L: really?

ME: A was talking about a Christmas pickle

L: do you know where it’s from?

ME: no I have no idea

L: I don’t know where it’s from 

ME: her [A’s] guess was like: someone in America was like let’s make a Christmas pickle and try to sell it. That was her guess. 

L: yeah, no yeah, we have a Christmas pickle. It’s sparkly

ME: You have a Christmas pickle that’s uh an ornament 

L: I’ll show it to you

ME: tell me what– tell me about the Christmas pickle

L: ok so the Christmas pickle, that’s from my dad’s side of the family. Ummm. I don’t even know where it came from, I should really ask them. But like I just remember ever since I was a little kid ‘find the pickle.’ it would always be my grandparents who would hide it on the tree and then like we would all search for it. I usually was the one to find it first. I’m not kidding, like almost every year. I don’t know why, I’m usually not that observant, but umm yeah the Christmas pickle. Loved it. Umm yeah, don’t know where it came from. And we would always go from there, youngest to eldest for opening presents. One at a time, always. Like that stuck.

Context:

This tradition was shared with me by a friend after going grocery shopping together when we sat in my bedroom to do schoolwork together.

L is a Jewish-American USC student studying sociology who grew up in Colorado.

Analysis:

Christmas games and present-giving styles vary greatly from house to house. The Christmas pickle seems one such game/style. Before this year I was unfamiliar with the tradition.

L says she has no idea where the practice came from, but that she loves it. I offer that the tradition may have been started by a company with the intention of profiting off of selling Christmas pickles. This style of tradition creation is not unprecedented, especially in America.

Hand Slap Game

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Santa Barbara, California, United States
Performance Date: 2-16-2023
Primary Language: English
Language: spanish

Text:

Two people face each other. Their hands are connected palms together with fingers together and thumbs upward. They extend their arms to connect their middle fingertips together lightly.  (see image below)

One person will try to take one of their hands away from the other and slap their partner’s hand. The partner with try to pull their hands away before they can be hit. 

(Though the informant assigned no such roles, I will refer to the partner aiming to slap as the offensive partner and the partner pulling back as the defending partner for ease of communication.)

If the defensive partner succeeds in avoiding the hit, both players will reset their hands to the starting position and the offensive partner will try again to hit the hand. This repeats until the offensive partner wins. If the offensive partner succeeds in hitting their partner’s hand they win, and the defensive partner loses. The original hand position is taken up again and this time the partner who lost will take on the offensive role (trying to slap their partner’s hand before they pull away.) and the partner who won will take up the defensive role (trying to pull away). Play proceeds like this for as long as is desired.

Context:

The informant learned this game at a young age from her father who is from Murcia, Spain.

Analysis:

This game reminds me of many other hand games primarily children will play. specifically, it reminded me of a very similar game I learned as a child. The game I know features the same goal of trying to slap the partner’s hands before they pull away, and also the same system for switching roles. The difference is the starting position. As I learned the game, the offensive partner would place their hands out palms up and the defender would lightly rest their hands over the partner’s hands palms down.

These hand games indicate resourcefulness among people and children especially. This game is a way to have fun without the need for any materials. it is also very quick to learn.

Game: Electric Shock

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: around usc
Performance Date: 2/16/2023
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

L is a junior at University of Southern California studying Communications. He is an international student from China who is telling us about a game he played as a child from his hometown in China, Anhui Province in the city Hefei. His first language was Chinese, so throughout the interview, he would sometimes slip into Chinese and struggle placing the exact words in English.

Text:
L: “It’s just another version of hide and seek in the place where I live. Like every hide and seek game. The one whose finding the others is gonna have to stay in place and counts for 30 seconds but that specific place is, in this game, a big pillar. He places his hand on the big pillar and counts for 30 seconds before he goes off and finds the others. I think that’s it.”
Why is it called Electric Shock?
L: “When we find another one, we say “Electric Shock” and he can’t move. He could move before, like if he tried to dodge he can move but he can’t be seen. But if he is seen, then ‘Electric Shock’ and he can’t move. He’s frozen in place.”
How do you win the game, to just not get found?
L: “Yeah, and by finding them all. And there is a time limit. Like for ten minutes. Like, you can’t be looking forever. So, ten minutes. If you can’t find everyone, then yeah.”

Context:
“For some reason, we don’t call Hide and Seek Hide and Seek. We call it Electric Shock in Chinese, like that’s just a traditional version native to the place, it’s name is called Electric Shock…very childish, like before sixth grade. I really have no idea how we came up [with it]. It’s something that we come up with, like our community. Like, there’s like 20-30 kids who live around our community. We come to same place every two days to play them. We play it so often. I have no idea why, but I guess it was very fun.”
This was a game specific to the community of the informant, a game shared among all the children of that area in the city they grew up in. The informant specified that they played this frequently during their early childhood, but stopped before sixth grade. They used it as a way to have fun with other children, and viewed as something childish: enjoyable as a kid to play, but socially unfitting for an adult.

Interpretation:
In every culture and nation, there seems to be a childhood game or two with which any child can play. There are commonalities between Electric Shock and American hide and seek and freeze tag. But to call Electric Shock a fusion of hide and seek and freeze tag would be ignorant of the Chinese community that created the environment that fostered this specific game. The time limit, the hand on the pillar, even the title, Electric Shock; these distinct variations compared to other examples of hide and seek or freeze tag make it unique. Even though it seems to be only played in one city of one province of one country in the world, Electric Shock has become a piece of children’s lore, its own folk game. However, its specificity to one region in the world does not take away from its purpose, synonymous to all other universal children’s lore. These small, folk games children invent give them a chance to let loose society’s expectations and have fun. There’s freedom that comes with playing the same game with dozens of other people your age, laughing and playing together. No matter the game style, title, or variation, the special nostalgia, fond fun and freedom that’s associated with childhood are hardly taken away. That makes childhood lore unifying under whatever variation, but simultaneously unique to each child’s upbringing.

Children’s Folk Game: Bloody Murder

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 02/22/23
Primary Language: English

Context: The informant recalls playing the game in his early childhood in the open fields of the west. The game would have to be played in a very rural area, with few to zero houses around. Two teams would form in order to play the game, one would have a “base” while the other would go out and hide in the field. The team at the base would stay within the base for a twenty-four-second count without looking to give the other team time to hide. The main purpose of the game was to hide as deep in the field as you could if you were on the other team. This way the base team would be forced to go deep into the fields to find you, and if they spotted you they would yell “bloody murder”, which would cause the hiding team to chase the entire base team back to their camp. If someone on the base team got tagged by the hiding team then that individual would switch teams. This process would go on until one team had all members and there was no one left on one of the teams. The informant noted that the hiding team did not have to wait until a base member yelled bloody murder in order to run after them.

Analysis: Looking at this game from all accounts, one gets the sense that this folk developed around groups of children whose fathers went to war during the twentieth century. The tactics of the game mimic a lot of war tactics used during guerrilla warfare, and thus one can conclude that the children put together “bloody murder” from the circumstances their fathers were undergoing during wars. In a strange way, perhaps even an adult incorporated this among children in order for them to learn or be introduced to war tactics, this way the children would grow up familiar with the basics of guerrilla warfare. This ensures that the upcoming generations of the American military would have strong, knowledgeable soldiers and leaders. When looking from another lens, this game could have also been a bonding activity amongst children who had absent fathers on account of the war, and thus bonded with one another through “bloody murder.” Children’s folklore tends to be anti-constitutional and is spurred by their inner creativity and the hardships they faced from being institutionally controlled.

Korean Handgame

Performance Date: 2/22/23
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

English translation: 

On the blue sky, Milky Way,

White boat

A tree of a tree and a rabbit 

It’s not a mast and there’s no sting.

It’s good to go to the west country. 

Cross the Milky Way to the cloud country. 

Where are you going after the cloud country.

Shining brightly from a distance

It’s a new star lamp. Find the way. 

First, you clap with two hands, then each other’s front of their hands touch, then clap together (all in a wave-like motion). Then clap again, then both mirror one hand above, one hand below, and clap together, then a final clap with both hands from each. This will continue until the song ends. 

The informant explains that the Korean hand game combines a Korean song with hand clapping that goes along with the rhythm. She was taught as a kid by her mother and quickly began to do it with her friends. The song is called Half Moon, and the lyrics seem to relate to the night sky and stars. The informant believes that it may have some tie to other Korean folklore but is not entirely sure. She explains that most if not all Korean children know this game.

The interesting thing about this hand-clapping game is that the game really is not a game. There is no winning in this game, and it simply ends when the song ends. There is no competition, and nothing to achieve other than the cultural aspect. I believe that because it is of Korean culture and origin, it has a more collectivist culture and thus its purpose is different.