Category Archives: Gestures

Pinning Money to the Bride’s Dress: Mexican Wedding Tradition

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 69
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 21, 2018
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Nicolas Estrada is a Mexican-American lawyer working in the greater Los Angeles area. His parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico before he and his sister were born. They settled in Southern California and quickly began to assimilate to the new culture. Nicolas’ parents imparted both Mexican and “American” customs to him and his sister, but they placed a stronger emphasis on American culture. For example, they raised Nicolas with Spanish as his first language, but encouraged him to speak only English in public. This strong emphasis on assimilation influenced Nicolas’ relationship with Mexican culture, but he can still recall some Mexican traditions being practiced in his home and at family functions. In the excerpt below, Nicolas describes one of the traditions he would observe at Mexican wedding receptions:

Nicolas: “Everyone would be at the reception after the ceremony ended. The couple would come out and they’d be present for the first time and a married couple—or as “man and wife.” And about mid-way through the reception, the bride would go to the dance floor and mingle with all of the guests. Everyone would be drunk by this point. And then guests would pin money to the bride’s dress with clothespins—not safety pins because that would probably damage the dress. But this would go on throughout the reception and by the end of the night, the bride would have a pretty significant amount of money pinned to her.”

Here, Nicolas describes a folkloric wedding custom. Pinning money on a bride’s wedding dress is both a folkloric gesture and ritual; it qualifies as a gesture because it is a widely recognized and encouraged practice that involves a specific action (i.e. pinning the money on the dress with clothespins); it also qualifies as a ritual because it takes place during weddings, which are largely considered to be special holidays. If one were to pin money on a bride’s dress during a reception, they would be demonstrating their familiarity with Mexican wedding customs and taking part in a collective activity.

Kicking the Flagpole on Game Day

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Master-level engineering student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 7, 2018
Primary Language: English

Daniel Shapiro earned his B.S. (bachelors degree of science) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 2017.  He is currently pursuing his masters degree in Mechanical Engineering at the same university.  He is a committed fan of USC football – since beginning his undergraduate education at USC in 2013, he has attended every ‘home game’ held at the Coliseum, USC’s football stadium. He honors all of the university’s football-related traditions and dresses in football regalia as he watches the games. In the transcription below, Daniel reflects on game-day customs.  He then goes on to describe one of his favorite traditions: kicking the flagpole before games.


Daniel: “So before every game, everyone hangs out on campus and ‘tailgates.’”

Isabella: “Can you describe what ‘tailgating’ is?”

Daniel: “‘Tailgating’ is when you pitch a tent or set up chairs on [the USC] campus on game days. Everyone just drinks and eats and plays beer-pong or whatever. Students and alumni all come together to celebrate the team.”

Isabella: “Do people stay on campus during the game?”

Daniel: “No, most people walk from campus to the Coliseum to watch the game. It’s a short walk – you just have to cross [the street] on Exposition [boulevard]. Before you reach the end of campus, there are some flagpoles that everyone kicks before they walk through the gates. It’s supposed to be good luck so everyone just does it. You walk up to the flagpole and hit it with the toe of your shoe and it makes a loud ‘ding’ sound. There are like five flagpoles, so collectively, it echoes pretty loud. Once you do that, you just start walking to the Coliseum. It’s supposed to help us win the games… It’s just a superstition, but it’s still really fun because everyone does it and you can feel the excitement.”

Daniel recognizes ‘game day’ as a sort of holiday amongst USC fans.  In this regard, kicking the flagpole serves as a ritual for them — it is a means of showing reverence and celebrating the event.  Moreover, as Daniel notes above, kicking the flagpole is rooted in superstitious belief.  That is to say, there are supernatural qualities associated with this behavior.  Fans of USC football perform this action in the hopes of bringing good luck to the team; conversely, it is considered bad luck to refrain from kicking the pole.  This ritual helps USC Football fans express their commitment to the team and promotes bonding.

Italian Easter Bread

Nationality: Italian-American, Irish-American
Age: 60
Occupation: Special Needs Teacher
Residence: Torrance, California
Performance Date: April 21, 2018
Primary Language: English

Joanna Estrada is a special needs teacher living in Los Angeles, California. She is 60 years old and has three daughters. Joanna has lived in Southern California since birth, moving from Redondo Beach to Torrance in her mid-twenties. Her father was Irish and her mother was Italian; as such, she grew up surrounded by multiple cultures and was brought up in the Catholic tradition. In the excerpt below, Joanna describes an Italian Easter tradition, wherein her Italian grandmother would bake special bread adorned with hardboiled eggs:

Joanna: “My grandmother would bake a woven, like a braided loaf of bread for Easter. She would divide the dough into three separate pieces and braid them together to make a wreath. Then she would bake it… And in the center and all around it, she would put hardboiled eggs that she colored with dye. She would soak them in dye to make them fun looking before she put placed them into the baked dough.

Isabella: “Was the bread symbolic in any way?”

Joanna: “The dough represented life and rebirth and things like that… it was for Easter, so the bread symbolized the beginning of life…”

Isabella: “What would you do with the bread? Was it an offering or sorts or did your family eat it?”

Joanna: “No, we definitely ate it. I really liked it because it had sort of a sweet taste to it. All this would happen in one day—she would bake the bread in the morning and we would eat it in the evening.”

Here, Joanna describes a ritual that her grandmother performed on Easter Sundays. For practitioners of Christianity and Catholicism, Easter is an important holiday. It marks the resurrection of Jesus Christ and has given birth to a number of commemorative traditions. The tradition Joanna describes above is at once a folkloric recipe and ritual. The bread itself serves as a sort of celebratory symbol, and the act of baking it may be considered a ritual. Joanna associates the woven bread with Easter and no other holidays; to the members of her family, Easter Sunday and the woven bread were irrevocably fused.

Claremont Colleges Birthday Tradition

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

Background information:

Throwing friends into the fountain on the day of their birthday has been a prank tradition for the span of several decades, and has become a birthday ritual for students at the five Claremont colleges. It is even noted on Claremont McKenna College’s website that the fountain at Flamson Plaza is a site that students visit to either study or to throw their friends into on their birthday.

Main Piece:

On the day of a friend’s birthday, it is a common tradition to throw that friend into a specific fountain at Claremont McKenna College. The fountain is located at Flamson Plaza and is in the middle the Claremont McKenna College campus. It is common for students from all five of the Claremont Consortium schools: Scripps College, Pomona College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, and Claremont McKenna College, to engage in this tradition. When it is a student’s birthday, friends of that student often barge into the student’s bedroom early in the morning, physically carry them over to the fountain at Flamson Plaza at Claremont McKenna College, and throw the student into the cold water as a sort of wake up to their birthday. When interviewing a friend of mine who was thrown into the fountain last year during her freshman year of college, she said that it was definitely one of the highlights of her time attending Claremont McKenna College. She said that this tradition was very unifying in the fact that this was a birthday ritual that was specific to the Claremont Colleges and made her feel that she was a part of the college community. My friend stated that even though this is a small tradition, it has a large impact on how an individual relates to the community at the Claremont Colleges and reaffirms the fact that a student’s friends care about them and want to celebrate their birthday.

 

Personal thoughts:

Throughout my time at Scripps College during my freshman year of college, I found that this was a specific tradition that peaked my interest. I would constantly see people being thrown into the ice-cold water of the fountains at Flamson Plaza and think that is was very entertaining. I would often think that it looks very entertaining to someone watching, but must be relatively burdensome for the student being abruptly woken up and thrown into the cold water in the morning of their birthday. As such, my friends at Scripps College knew that I did not want to be thrown into the fountain on my birthday and always joked that they would throw me into the fountain but never did, to my relief!

Tomb visiting day in Taiwan

Nationality: Taiwanese/American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese

Background information:

My friend introduced me to a practice that he and his relatives often perform surrounding the celebration of his ancestors. He is of Taiwanese descent, as he was born in San Francisco, California and both of his parents were born in Taipei, Taiwan. His family moved to California since before he was born and have assimilated into the American lifestyle but still stay very true to their Taiwanese roots and take great pride in their Taiwanese culture.

 

Main piece:

My friend said that throughout his childhood and growing up, he would always celebrate his ancestors with his relatives. He explained that there is a special day in Taiwan where family members all get together and visit the tombs or graves of their ancestors. When they visit their ancestors, they do everything from pray to bring a large amount of food for both them as well as their ancestors to enjoy. He explained this as not being an event of sadness, but rather a celebration where family members are able to reconnect and bond over their unity in their family and eat traditional Taiwanese foods. He said that his family members come from all over Taiwan and therefore all of his family members travel to the location where their ancestors are buried, when they are celebrating this day, showing the importance that people place on this event and how crucial it is that everyone attends.

When I asked if there was any dish in particular that was popular for this event, he responded that fruit is very common to bring, along with other desserts such as red bean desserts and rice cakes, emphasizing that sweets are often preferred in his experience.

 

Personal thoughts:

Upon hearing this tradition, I felt that this was a fantastic way to celebrate relatives that have passed away because everyone in the family is joining in on this event, unifying the family a great deal. In addition to the unifying and memorable factors of this celebration, I feel that the great amounts of food definitely make this event even more successful, as I have always experienced that having food at events usually makes them vastly more successful and memorable.