Category Archives: Game

Secret Santa, but make it competitive

C is 32, he was born in Visalia, California. He grew up with a foster family in California’s San Joaquin Valley. He told me about his foster family’s take on secret Santa.

“There was a family tradition I had with my foster family… every Thanksgiving we would put names in a hat and we would draw names on Thanksgiving and it’s like secret Santa… and we buy that person a gift… whoever’s name we got… and everyone would try and guess who got who and if they guess the person that drew their name, they could have their gift but if they didn’t they would have to wait until Christmas Eve. It got really competitive (laughs)”

Secret Santa is widely credited in America to a philanthropist named Larry Dean Stewart. Stewart struggled in his younger years, and reportedly was giving help and hope by the generous contributions of strangers at low points in his life. When he became a millionaire in the cable and telephone business, he decided to “pay it forward” by handing out $100 bills and large anonymous cash donations (https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15751409). Secret Santa, however, is a tradition that goes back much further. One Scandinavian tradition known as Julklapp, involves throwing presents into people’s doorways and running away after knocking (https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Julklapp). Around the world, other anonymous gift traditions exist around various holidays, like Amigo Secreto or Angelito on Valentine’s Day in Latin Countries (https://blog.willamette.edu/worldnews/2010/02/22/amigo-secreto/).

Loteria

R is 31. His family is from Mexico, he was born in Sanger, California. He was very excited and happy to tell me about how his family played the game Loteria.

“We were big on Loteria, Loteria is like Mexican bingo… we played as a family with beans or rocks or pasta shells… so Loteria is pretty much like, like bingo but with cards… so there’s a deck of cards that has different pictures of things… like la sirena, la musica, el apache, la rana… and the pictures that go with them… stuff like that and pretty much you buy the game and it comes with these preset boards, they’re 5 by 4 or 4 by 4… something like that… and they have some of the different card pictures on them… but we would cut them up and rearrange them to like… make our own luck… so pretty much everybody gets their boards ready and then we shuffle the deck and the middle square on the board is a free play… and you win by… as you draw cards, you put like a bean or pasta shell… my mom liked glass rocks… the shiny ones that people use for like aquariums or flower arrangements… everyone in my family had their own pieces… my tia liked pasta, my other tia used dry pinto beans, my grandma used coins, like dimes, nickels, or quarters because she liked money (laughs) I like rocks, like smooth river rocks I would find at Avocado lake… we would go there swimming in the summer… so you draw cards and if you have the card on your board you put a piece over it and so… basically when you start the game, there’s two pots, there’s a game pot and a jack pot and there’s money in ‘em, quarters, nickels, dimes, you know cuz grandma… so the first to match the four corners wins the jack pot, then if you matched across horizontally or diagonally you would get the smaller game pot. We would play this all the time… bar-b-q’s, holidays… my family got together a lot, like weekly, for family dinners or whatever… everyone calls it Loteria but my family calls it cholupa, after one of the cards… it’s a lady in a canoe wearing like a folklorico dress… I didn’t find out it was called Loteria until like 5 years ago, we always called it cholupa after that card. We all kind of had our own cards that were also like our nicknames… like my tia was la dama because she thought she was fancy and my uncle was el boracho because he liked to drink and I was el apache because my skin is darker.”

Loteria came to Mexico by way of Italy and Spain, for a brief history of Loteria see, https://teresavillegas.com/history-of-la-loteria/ for variations on game play, see http://www.maravillasoftware.com/loteriamexicana.html. The customizations R’s family members added, such as individual game pieces and nicknames associated with the cards show folklore’s role in identity formation and cultural pride passed along in family tradition.

Stickball

Nationality: American
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Israel
Performance Date: April 2022
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

Background:

Stickball was a popular game in mid-20th century New York City. The game was played by children in the streets, using whatever resources they could find. The informant, who spent most of his childhood in the New York City in the 1970’s would play the game with the neighborhood kids.

Context:

This piece was related to me over a Zoom call

Main Piece:

MK: Stickball was my least favorite. I had terrible hand-eye coordination and could never get contact with the ball.”

Me: It’s akin to baseball, right?

MK: Yea, it’s a poor man’s baseball. You’ve probably seen it played in those movies about the mob and the mafia – like the Bronx tale. The church they used in that movie was the church my family went to. We played stickball outside. There was a batter and a pitcher and a bunch of kids playing in the street. We used trashcans or whatever we could find as bases, and a little pink rubber ball. They made stick ball bats, but most kids just used a broom handle – a skinny broom handle. 

Me: It had all the same rules as baseball?

MK: It was supposed to, pretty much. Sometimes we only had two bases. We would use boxes, trashcans, manhole covers. There was one kid named Davie who was miniscule – underdeveloped. No one liked him because he talked funny and we’d only let him play if he agreed to be a base. Kids would hit and run and as they ran by him they’d slap him across the gut real hard. But it was our version of baseball. When we’d get home from school everyone would drop their books off, say hello to their mother, and run down into the street to play. There was a pitcher and an outfield of a few guys. We had two team captains and they’d take the bat and one would put their hand around the bottom. Then the other captain put their hand on top of the other captain’s hand and they’d alternate up until the top of the bat. Whoever had the last hand on top of the bat got to pick their team first.

Me: Were there cars bustling down the streets you played on?

MK: Oh yea. We had lookouts and whenever a car was headed toward us, the lookout would scream, ‘Car! Car!” and everyone would grab the bases and run out of the way. As soon as the car had passed we’d bring everything back and get right back into the game.

Me: How long did you play for?

MK: We usually played five or six innings in a game because a lot of kids wanted to play, so we couldn’t play a full game of nine like baseball. But we’d play game after game, until enough of our mothers called us home and there weren’t enough kids left to play. We’d sometimes lose too many balls also and wouldn’t have one to play with. That was always devastating. Like the end of the world devastating.

Thoughts:

Stickball is a game that I’ve seen only in cinema or read about in literature. The game was probably a weekly or daily tradition where many friendships and bonds were formed and cemented. It was probably a proving ground for many kids, as most of the time, the kids who are dominant in athletics get the respect and admiration of the other kids. Although it was just a game in the street, the kids probably played with a grave seriousness and competitive nature. One thing I found interesting was the guerilla-style that stickball was played in. The informant remarked that they used whatever they could find as bases, sometimes not even having four bases to play with. It was a tradition that was sacred amongst kids, and it must be played at all costs.

Ringolevio

Nationality: American
Age: 59
Occupation: Retired
Residence: New Jersey
Performance Date: April 18, 2022
Primary Language: English

Background:

The informant is my friend’s mother who grew up in the Bronx in the 1960s. Ringolevio is a game that they’d play in the streets outside their houses, or in the abandoned lots throughout the neighborhood. The informant told me that Ringolevio was her favorite game growing up as a kid.

Context:

My friend’s mother told me about Ringolevio over a phone call. We were discussing much of her early life growing up in mid 20th century New York City, and she spoke with particular fondness as she reminisced about Ringolevio.

Main Piece:

KB: Ringolevio was my favorite game. We’d play for hours with all the kids on my street. One house was torn down and there was a big, abandoned lot that we would play it in.

Me: So what were the rules?

KB: Well, there was a chasing team and a running team, like cops and robbers. One area would be marked off up against the fence and that would be the jail. The runners would run around the lot while the chasers would chase after them, trying to catch them. If you caught a runner – you had to try and grab them, usually their arm – you would hold on and yell “Ringolevio, coca-cola, 1-2-3, 1-2-3.” If you could say that while holding on to the runner – the runner would try and break free from your grasp – the runner would have to go to the jail area and be locked up. When someone was in jail, one of their teammates could free them by running into the jail area and tagging their jailed teammate without getting caught.

Me: And the girls played with the boys?

KB: Oh of course, everyone played everything together. We all played for hours, and it was quite rough a lot of the time. The boys were really quite rough with the girls and especially each other. A loooot of bruises and scrapes.

Me: How many kids were on one team?

KB: However many we had as long as there was even numbers.

Me: Were there ever any fights?

KB: No, not a lot of fist fights. The boys would get into arguments and things could get out of hand, but really never any fist fights that I can remember. We mostly played ringolevio at the age before boys started getting into scraps and things like that.

Thoughts:

Although we were speaking on the phone, I could deduce that the informant was thoroughly enjoying the flood of memories that was rushing back to her as she described her favorite childhood game. What stands out to me is the lack of tools or objects needed to play Ringolevio. All that is needed is the kids and some open space – no bats, balls, or nets. The prospect of boredom spurs immense creativity in kids looking to avoid it at all costs. Games like Ringolevio are customs that unify the bonds and relationships between kids. Ringolevio also appeared to offer a chance to young kids to win the praise and admiration of their friends, as whoever was the fastest and the best at the game was sure to gain the respect of the other children.

Lintu lentää, liitää laataa, kiitää kaataa, hocus pocus pocus!

Nationality: American
Age: 65
Occupation: Writer
Residence: Seattle, Washington
Performance Date: April 28, 2022
Primary Language: English
Language: Finnish

Informant Background:

My informant, KL, is my mother. Her father was born in Finland and immigrated to the United States as a young adult. She described this nursery rhyme that she remembers from growing up and then passed down to my sister and myself when we were very young.

Piece of Folklore:

Original Wording: “Lintu lentää, liitää laataa, kiitää kaataa, hocus pocus pocus!”

Translation: bird flying, soaring high, diving down, hocus pocus pocus!

This short lullaby would be accompanied with hand movements mimicking a bird flying overhead for the first half (the part spoken in Finnish), followed by the hand “diving down” to snatch the child as a meal, i.e. tickle the child’s stomach or chin during “hocus pocus pocus.”

Analysis:

            I remember giggling to this often as a child. In addition to the tickling itself, as the lullaby was repeated over the duration of my early childhood, there was an aspect of anticipation – I knew the tickling was coming, and so I would burst into laughter before I was even touched. From a larger cultural standpoint, the lyrics of the lullaby reflect a naturalistic element of Finnish culture. There is a concept of the Sielulintu, or soul-bird, which was thought to deliver souls to children when they were born and carry them away when they died, which may be related to this tradition.