Category Archives: Material

Chinese Lunar New Year

Context:

A, 18, is a student at USC. He is a French citizen of Chinese descent; he told me about how his family celebrated Lunar New Year when he visited China. He told me he grew up in France, so he seldom celebrated this tradition, only when he was in China back when he was young.  

Text:

Chinese Lunar New Year is celebrated on the second new moon after the winter solstice, so it’s usually around the end of January or the beginning of February. Every Lunar New Year is about a different zodiac animal, this is the year of the rabbit (2023). We usually wear red or red clothes and use traditional Chinese red paper lamps. We also put up fish posters to symbolize wealth in China, we put them on walls and doors to bring good fortune. We eat dumplings and blow-up firecrackers and fireworks.

Analysis:

Chinese Lunar New Year is a very common celebration among the Chinese diaspora throughout the world. It celebrates the New Year, and just like many other cultures, it lines up with the life cycle calendar beginning with spring (birth) and ending in winter (death). It is a liminal time between two cycles, so it is a magical time outside of the norm filled with superstitions, feasts, and celebrations. This festival is annually celebrated, as one might assume by its name; however, contrastively to the Solar year and Gregorian Calendar, this festival aligns with the Lunar Calendar, which is why it is on a different day every year. The rituals and superstitions that are celebrated during this festival often are practiced to bring good luck; similar to most cultures around the world that also have “good fortune” superstitions during their new year celebrations as well.

Crawfish Festival

Text (festival/traditional food)

“The Crawfish festival is a classic festival we’ve all been to growing up since it has carnival rides, games, and good food you can only really find in the south.”

Context 

My informant was born and raised in Texas and has been to the festival with family and friends numerous times since they were a child.

Q: “What is the crawfish festival?”

A: “The crawfish festival is a festival usually celebrated in southern states and includes carnival games, vendors, crawfish, and other southern comfort foods. It’s basically a celebration of southern culture and hospitality where people come together and appreciate community and popular southern delicacies.

Analysis 

The Crawfish Festival is popular in Louisiana, Texas, and other southern states for both locals and visitors to come together, enjoy, and commemorate southern culinary traditions not typically found in regions outside of the south. Crawfish isn’t the only traditional culinary form available at the festival, there also includes crawfish, étouffée, jambalaya, and more. These traditional foods are all part of Cajun and Creole cuisine. Crawfish are popular in Creole cuisine as they are abundantly found in the south, étouffée is a roux including crawfish and other seafood topped over rice, and jambalaya is another rice-based dish including sausage, chicken, and seafood typically served at large gatherings. People of all backgrounds and cultures travel to the south to participate in the Crawfish Festival as this is a way for cultural heritage and culinary lore to be spread and enjoyed across various communities. Seafood and dark meat products were major food sources for enslaved African Americans. This cuisine is a reflection of various influences and factors representative of a larger cultural identity in African American communities. Appadurai discusses the cultural significance of cultural cuisines in asserting cultural identity and representations of class hierarchies. These southern foods commonly eaten by enslaved African Americans, is an acknowledgment of African American resistance to slavery while embracing cultural customs predominately seen in the southern United States. This is representative of how culinary lore and recipes move where people don’t as they assert a cultural identity and exemplify resistance to the impacts of colonialism.

King Cake

Text (traditional foods/folk belief)

“I bought King Cake one year. I thought it was just going to be a slice, but it was big enough for multiple people.”

Context 

My informant has attended the Mardi Gras parade twice and tried King cake once when she went with friends.

Q: “What is King Cake?”

A: “King Cake is a large type of cake in a circular shape but hollow in the middle almost like a rope that is decorated in icing and sugar of the Mardi Gras colors: green, gold, and purple. It typically has a tiny toy baby in the center of it that represents baby Jesus and is a symbol of a year of good luck and prosperity to whoever finds it in their slice”

Analysis

King cake during the celebration of Mardi Gras is a collective ritual most people participate in to celebrate and participate in the cultural experience as well as hoping to find the plastic baby looking forward to prosperity in the coming year. Stemming from Frazer’s ideas of belief and sympathetic magic, this shows how non-scientific belief has an influence on the natural world implying good luck and warding off bad energy. It’s a form of homeopathic magic as “like produces like” or finding the baby Jesus produces good luck and prosperity. This custom is rooted in European traditions dating back to the Epiphany, a Christian holiday representative of the Magi visiting baby Jesus. Originally, a baby Jesus figure was hidden in bread and whoever found it would be king or queen for the day. After the spread of this tradition in New Orleans, bakers would add their own spin on the ritual varying decorations and selling the cakes during Mardi Gras season. The cake is very large and meant to be shared and eaten with others as a community bonding ritual that brings people together in celebration and festivities reinforcing communal cultural identity. This is an example of the ways folklore changes through time based on the cultural context of a community. Steering away from medieval societal structures, the context in which the toy baby Jesus was used changed from an aristocratic nature to an uplifting optimistic symbol of luck and prosperity brought by the baby Jesus. Also exemplary of religious folklore, this practice is a for Catholic belief to be communally shared, and enjoyed by festival participants bringing people together to cherish and understand more about the religious custom and how it has evolved through time.

The Science Bunny

Text:

A: I mean if you’re looking for a real piece of folklore, I have a science bunny. You remember the science bunny.

ME: science bunny?

A: the science bunny goes in the pocket of lab coat

ME: ohhh!! (I remembered the science bunny at this point) 

A: every time I have a biology lab or any time that I’m in my lab coat really. Which is a lot. I was in it like uhh probably eight hours a week this semester.

ME: where did you get this bunny?

A: it was a gift for Chinese New Year that was sent from my aunt who’s not my aunt. So she sent me a little–

ME: like a family-friend aunt?

A: a family-friend aunt. 

ME: I have those too

A: and then they had like, the ears had like lanterns and some stuff on them. So but then it was so tiny that I could stick it in my pocket. And then whenever we had exams, my friend and I (who is in biology and chemistry) wed take out the bunny– Cause usually we’d be sitting around each other in the exam room– the bunny, all the knowledge all the science knowledge it’d absorbed by sitting in my pocket, it was going to give back to us. So, that is my little superstition. I’m also convinced that somebody lives in my basement at home, secretly. But that’s not a superstition

ME: well that’s a legend, for another story

A: that’s a legend

ME: interesting, you’ll have to tell me more about the basement guy later. Uhh, the bunny… why do you think you do the bunny? Does it help?

A: I don’t know if it helps, but I think it’s fun to have traditions because it became kind of a little point of comradery. And the fact that one friend would always bully the bunny, so then I would bully the friend. And then also like my other friend, he always just liked seeing the bunny. It was kinda a thing we could all rally around. So it was like every time the science bunny came out… one of my friends was like o my gosh you’re such like a, you’re gonna be such a pediatrician. You with your little bunny. You carry a stuffed animal with you. And I was like aww. And it’s kinda cute, you know it’s just something to hold on to. So yeah…

ME: I appreciate this, thank you

A: glad to get your homework done

Context:

This tradition was shared with me by a friend and USC peer while waiting to collect boxes in preparation for move-out.

A grew up in Missouri, USA. A was at the time of sharing a pre-med student.

Analysis:

Good luck charms are quite common. Seeking good luck on academic tests and challenges is similarly precedented. The science bunny reminded me of a rabbit’s foot: a common good luck charm. I don’t think A’s use of the science bunny was directly influenced by ideas of rabbits’ feet, but it’s interesting on a basis of convergent practices.

The idea that the bunny might absorb knowledge from observing labs and then return the knowledge to A and her friends is also interesting to me. Despite A not fully believing it this seems to be an instance of magic.

A finds meaning in this practice because it brings her closer to her friends. “It was kinda a thing we could all rally around.”

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.