Category Archives: Game

Family tradition—Holidays

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 4/9/18
Primary Language: English

I talked to my neighbor in my apartment Greg, and asked if he had any traditions during holidays in his family. He told me about a tradition he does every year since he was young during St. Patrick’s Day.

 

Greg said that ever since he was young, “My family and I on St. Patrick’s Day will set up a leprechaun trap in our house and outside our lawn. It was something I did when I was younger but now I think we still do it to keep that feeling of being young in our family. Even when I am not home for the holiday my parents set up traps and send me photos.

 

Background Info: Greg’s family is part Irish, so he has always done a big celebration for St. Patrick’s Day. He says that this leprechaun trap is something he loved doing when he was little and now his family still does it for fun and to keep the tradition alive.

 

Context: Greg told me about this during dinner at our fraternity house on the topic of family holiday traditions. He also does a similar thing for Christmas (cookie as a trap to find Santa)

 

Analysis: I never really celebrated St. Patrick’s Day that much growing up so it was interesting to hear about this holiday tradition as well as other things that his family does for this March 17th event. I also thought it was funny and cool that his family still does this even though Greg and his brother are older now.

H.O.R.S.E

Nationality: Salvadorian
Age: 20
Performance Date: 4-17-18
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:  So horse is a basketball game. Well like not an actual game but like you play it with a basketball and you need a court. Basically the game is like a trick shot game. And whoever doesn’t make the shot five times looses. Me: Can you elaborate on that? Ok so the game is played by however number of people you want. First you have to choose a order that the players are going to be in. So the first person goes and could do whatever trickshot they want. So if they miss then it is the next persons turn. If they make it then the next person would have to do the same trick shot. If they make it then the next person would have to the same shot until it goes back to the person who made that trickshot…But if someone misses a tricksot then the person gets a letter. The first letter is H then O then ughh R then S then E. That’s why the game is called horse. And you loose when you spell out horse. Oh so lets say you made a trickshot and then the next person missed it then they get a letter and then the person after him does not have to do that trickshot anymore. Like they could do their own.  Context: Kevin and I were playing video games and when we took a break to eat I asked him if he could help me with my collection of folklore. He agreed and allowed me to record the conversation with the condition that I would not post the video interview. We were both sitting on the couch.  Background: Kevin is a 20 year old attending California State University Los Angeles. Both his parents are from El Salvador but he was born and raised in Huntington Park, California. Kevin stated that he enjoyed this game very much because it was his way of practicing and having more fun with his friends. He stated that he actually learned this game from his teammates when he would stay after practice and just play with them. Although, he did mention that the version of H.O.R.S.E he plays now is slightly different than when he learned it. The people he plays with now have the rule that if they miss a trickshot that is their own, they will also get a letter. My thoughts: Although folklore has no clear definition, a key component is that you learn it from other people in a non institutional place. This is clearly seen in Kevin’s example. He learns this game from his friends. Also, as stated by Alan Dundes “there must be multiplicity and variation. The game H.O.R.S.E is also fits into the category. There are many different variation to the game but the underlying mechanics of the game are still the same. I have actually played the game and I to learned it from friends. I also know another variation of horse called P.I.G. It is the same game but instead of having five letters you now have three.

18 Help Me

Nationality: Salvadorian
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4-17-18
Primary Language: English

Main context: Me: Are there any other games you learned from a friend or just other people in general? Kevin: Let me think… oh ok got it. When I was a kid I learned how to play a game called 18 help me. Me: Oh cool. What is the game about. Kevin: Essentially, it’s a different variation of tag. You would try to get 18 players but usually you could not so I always just played with whatever number of people we had. So first you had to choose someone to be it. We would all put one foot into a circle and choose one foot to start at and up to 18 around the feet and whoever had 18 land on their foot was it… After I remember we would have 18 seconds to run before whoever was it would chase us. To win the game you had to get everyone but each person you got would then help you. Essentially you would have to put your hand on the other person and say 18 help me. If you did not say everything while touching them then you wouldn’t have got them. When you do get them they go and help you get the rest of the people until everyone has been tagged. After that then everyone would huddle again and whoever was tagged first in the last game would now be it. Then again you had 18 seconds to run before getting chased again and the game would be played over and over again until we uh were exhausted… or until fell and got hurt. Me: Sounds fun. What does the game mean to you? Kevin: Now that I really think about it, it is actually pretty important. I remember playing 18 help me every time I would go over to my tia’s (aunt) house. I have a lot a good memories hanging out with all my cousins. It somewhat like brought us together but now that we are all in college… we really don’t see each other that often. Background: Kevin is a 20 year old attending California State University Los Angeles. Both his parents are from El Salvador but he was born and raised in Huntington Park, California. Context: Kevin and I were playing video games and when we took a break to eat I asked him if he could help me with my collection of folklore. He agreed and allowed me to record the conversation with the condition that I would not post the video interview.  My thought: I was surprised at how important this folk game is. Although it is a multi-million dollar game such as a sport, its importance is centralized around the people who play it. This folk game brought together a family and served as a platform for bonding. This game is a variation of the common game called tag.

Kings, A Drinking Game

Nationality: polish american
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: nyc, usa
Performance Date: 4/6/18
Primary Language: English

Kings is a game where you use each card in a deck of cards to represent a different drinking rule. This was told me by my older friends who experienced drinking before I. This game was talk to me by one of my friends. We always hang out and find things to do in the summer, a lot of them are drinking socially. One of our favorite games is called Kings. In this game it is basically a random way of making everybody in the group drink, by following rules based on a classic deck of cards. This game is really fun to play because there’s not many guidelines however you can make the game as fun or intense as you want it to be. The rules are pretty self-explanatory, and it’s a really fun game to play to pass time, enjoy great laughs, and to get drunk. We play this game in New York City, and I have tried to introduce this game to some of my friends, who have never even heard of it. It is really interesting to think of the geographic boundaries that games have been passed down. There are also other drinking games that I do not know that are played in other regions of the country, which shows the diversity amongst verbal folklore.
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Tradition of Patterning Chanukah Candles

Nationality: Jewish-American
Age: 15
Occupation: Student
Residence: Seattle, WA
Performance Date: 29 Mar 2018
Primary Language: English

“So, every night of Chanukah, you put one candle in the menorah for the number of the current night, starting on the right, as well as the shamash, which you light the rest with, from left to right. Everyone does that… But in my family we always tried to do something cool with the candles themselves. My parents always bought those really cheap Chanukah candles from, like, the grocery store or somewhere that come in different colors like blue, white, yellow—I think it’s actually all the colors plus white—so my brother and I would always try to arrange the candles in some sort of pattern every night, So it was aesthetically pleasing, you know? Sometimes the whole menorah would be, like, one color, except the shamash. Or it would alternate colors, purple-orange-purple-orange, (actually, I think there were never green candles, um,…) but, yeah, we took a lot of art classes as kids, and were also both kind of OCD, so I guess that came out… We tried for complimentary colors and things… The challenge was always to plan ahead so that every night could have a perfect design. And we’d make sure that the last night could always be only blue and white—the Jewish colors. I dunno, it was just a kind of way to make it more interesting, the tradition, that is.”

I decided it would be interesting to see if I could collect religious folklore from someone not particularly religious, so this tradition/ritual comes from teenaged girl, who is ethnically Jewish, but neither practicing nor bat mitzvahed. I simply asked her to explain different components of how she celebrates Chanukah. This specific ritual practice puts a personal, non-institutional twist on something essential to the celebration of the holiday, the lighting of the menorah, which is mandated by the religion. It is way of inserting personal significance—in this case, a love of patterns, creativity, and mathematics—into a traditional ritual which would otherwise hold little meaning for my informant.