Category Archives: Earth cycle

Seasonal and celetial based

Marzanna

Nationality: Polish
Occupation: Reference Librarian
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: Polish
Language: Russian, French, English, Spanish, Latin

My informant was raised in Poland and has lived there most of her life.  In the late 1970’s, she first participated in this traditional festival as one of her Girl Scout activities.  She explained that this festival dates back to pagan times, and that everyone was allowed to participate.  They would build a doll of straw and tree branches and dress it in old clothes.  The clothes were supposed to look rather trashy and they would decorate the doll to look ugly.  Then everyone would gather around to throw the doll into a river.  Hence, the Americanized name for this festival is the Drowning of the Doll.

Traditionally, the doll symbolizes winter.  After months of freezing weather, the Polish wish to free themselves of the cold, so they personify the winter as a doll.  My informant explained that the doll “symbolizes winter, so it’s ugly.”  Then, when the doll is thrown into the river, it’s like they’re killing the winter that has passed and they can look forward to warmer months.

The festival is only celebrated by the Polish because it represents their unique pagan past, a time without the foreign influences of modern times.  This does not mean that this holiday is only celebrated in Poland.  My informant has not attended Marzanna since her youth, but she has heard of instances of people of Polish heritage having their own festivals in other countries to connect them with their homeland

Camp Stories

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Edgewater, Maryland
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

My informant told me about some of the camp stories that she used to hear at her summer camp, Camp Letts, in Edgewater, Maryland, which as my informant describes, is an offshoot of the Chesapeake Bay.

She said that the counselors were the ones who typically told these stories to the campers, and that there aws no particular time that they always told the stories. It was sometimes around a campfire, or sometimes just in the cabins or during mealtime.

There were two stories in particular that were mainly used as a means to scare campers away from wandering in the woods or near the pool late at night, thought this intention never occurred to my informant until she was older.

The first story was the girl with the red scarf. My informant doesn’t remember why she had a red scarf, but it was significant to the story. The story is that there were two counselors who were in love and they decide that in the middle of the night that they were going to go into the middle of the woods and meet up at this spot. The boy goes into the woods and he waits and waits for this girl but she never shows up. It’s really dark and the guy doesn’t have anything with him to light the way. He starts walking when suddenly he runs into a body, which turns out to the body of the girl, hanging from a tree by strangled by her red scarf. Her death was blamed on a strangling ghost, meant to scare the children at the camp.

The second story scared children away from the pool. There was a camp manager having a secret relationship with a counselor, and they would often meet at a certain spot that would later become a spot for the camp pool. One night, there was an accident and the girl counselor slipped and fell and died. The camp manager, afraid of getting caught in the relationship and blamed for her death, buried her under the spot where the pool was built and the campers were told that if you went to the pool at night, her ghost would try and grab you. They also warned campers of swimming to the bottom of the pool because of her ghost, to keep beginner swimmers from pushing themselves too far.

German New Year’s Dinner

Nationality: German/Irish-American
Age: 52
Residence: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

My informant, whose background actually features multiple nationalities, remembers her traditional dinner that they had every New Years day for good luck. It consisted of pork and sauerkraut. When she talked of this dinner she actually referred to it as a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, the Pennsylvania Dutch actually referring to German Immigrants, a mispronunciation of the German word for Germans, Deutsch.

The sauerkraut is cooked in a crock-pot with the pork for the entire day, and my informant said that apples were sometimes included in the pot with the sauerkraut to make it sweeter. Considering the abundance of apples in the region, this is no surprise that they were used.

The Pennsylvania Dutch traditional dish from which my informant’s contemporary meal comes from is actually something known as hog maw, which was pork sausage and potatoes stuffed into in a cleaned pig’s stomach, boiled, and sliced.

My informant also mentioned that kielbasa, an Eastern European traditional sausage, was also included with the shredded pork and sauerkraut.  This influence comes from the Pittsburgh area, which features a large eastern European population that immigrated to the area for jobs in the steel mills around the turn of the century 1900s.

 

Devil’s Night

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pennsylvania
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

My informant told me about the traditions surrounding Devil’s Night, or October 30th, the night before Halloween. She mentioned that the normal activities boys would participate in would be egging houses at night and “doorbell ditching.” When egging became an issue of destruction of property and legal action could be taken against the children involved, they switched from egging a house to using toilet paper, spreading it around trees and the house yard.

My informant felt that this was a very east coast tradition because of our association to early Halloween traditions and witches in Salem. She could not name when Devil’s Night started, just that several generations of her family knew about it and all that went on that night, usually criminal behavior.

Often this would involve smashing pumpkins as well. My informant thought that maybe this was another imitation of spirits because of the stories surrounding Halloween. My informant said that when she was younger, her parents would tell her scary stories of things that happened on Devil’s Night to prevent her from going out and taking part in the activities that got her fellow classmates into trouble.

Red Packets (红包 or 利市)

Nationality: Singaporean Chinese
Occupation: Journalist
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: February 2007
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

During Chinese New Year, children are given red packets filled with money. In the past, the red packets were placed under the pillow for good luck in the New Year and to ward off evil spirits from invading the dreams. The money inside of the packets is always an even number like 8, 10, and 20 because good luck comes in pairs. The packets are red because red is a lucky number.  Only unmarried people can receive these and only married people can distribute it, regardless of age.

                  My informant has been receiving these packets since birth and was required to pass these out in Singapore since the 1960s. Most people in Chinese communities all over the world practice this particular custom. Most Chinese kids see it as a way to get money during the New Year season.  To get one of these red packets, kids need to greet their elders with auspicious phrases and wishing them good luck.

                  This is not just limited to the Chinese, but there are many other countries that have variations of this custom as well. The Malays also give money after Ramadan, during Hari Raya, but in green packet with odd numbers. The Vietnamese giver something similar to these red packets and the Japanese have white packets with the names of the receiver written on the outside. It’s interesting how customs like this are spread all throughout Asia because it is an example of diffusion and adopting customs.