Category Archives: Festival

Passover Seder Meals

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 78
Occupation: Psychiatrist
Residence: Mexico City
Performance Date: 03/16/2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: Hebrew

Main Piece: Everything we eat in Pesach has a special meaning behind it. We eat an egg, a lamb bone, bitter vegetable herbs and fruits and nuts, all because it reminds of the deeds of good Moshe. The lamb represents the sacrifice of a goat that was offered at the Holy Temple, for which Moshe was responsible. The fruits and nuts are the mortar that our people used to build storage houses for Pharaoh. The egg, which is hard boiled, was eaten on the first Pesach Seder that took place in the Holy Temple after the sacrifice. We also sacrificed a chicken for the Lord, and ate the egg it laid behind to remind ourselves of our connection to Him. Finally, there’s the matza, the most important of all the meals. Bread with no yeast. The meal of our people for 40 years in the desert. When we eat it, we are reminded of the suffering and dedication of Moshe and the slaves that gave the Holy Land back to us. At the end of the night, we have a little game where the elders hide the matza in some place of the house and the children look for it. Whoever finds it first gets money from the grandparents, and they get to eat it. I don’t know if it has a deeper meaning behind it, but it was my way of keeping the children up for the entire thing. It’s very important to me that they celebrate the Seder with us and understand their history through our food and traditions.

Background information about the piece by the informant: Ethel is the matriarch of a Jewish family in Mexico City and always organizes the Seder dinners in her house. As she said, they are very important to her, as her grandchildren learn about their cultural history through it.

Context about the piece: Pesach, or Passover, celebrates the Biblical event in which Moses freed the Hebrew people from the slavery of Egypt. According to the Torah, they wandered 40 years in the desert before arriving to Canaan, or Israel, to build their Holy Temple.

Thoughts about the piece: Like many other Jewish festivities, it is celebrated and remembered through food. This goes on to show that the Jewish culinary tradition is not simply based on the ingredients available to the culture, but is rather strongly tied to the significance of their traditions. The game of the mazta in the end gives an interactive aspect to the Seder, which involves the younger participants of the ritual and draws in the younger generations to continue the tradition.

 

Garba

Nationality: Indian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 24, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi, Tamil

My informant is a young Indian-American woman who is well-versed in the customs of her culture and frequently participates in these traditions. She told me about Garba, a traditional Indian dance.

Garba is a non-choreographed dance celebration usually performed during the festival of Navratri (based on the Hindi words for nine + nights). Garba is typically performed by North Indians and Gujaratis but is sometimes celebrated by Punjabis.

Garba usually celebrates the Hindu goddess Durga, who is considered to be the main mother of creation. It consists of two circles, one in the center of the other, with an idol inside the inner circle. The inner circle is supposed to represent the womb of the universe, while the circles represent time because the Hindu concept of time is cyclical due to reincarnation. The dancers are always switching dance partners, so they are constantly moving.

The traditional outfit worn during Garba is a chaniya choli: a top that sometimes has a vest or jacket, with a long skirt and a scarf. People come to this celebration dressed up in bright colors and the women wear lots of nice jewelry – essentially people choose to come dressed up and looking their best.

The version of this dance that my informant is familiar with is called Dandiya. In this dance, each dancer wields two wooden sticks roughly 2cm in diameter and 1.5ft in length. Sometimes these sticks are decorated but they are usually plain. Two people act as dance partners and hit each other’s sticks together: first one stick, then the other, then both, then they spin, and then move on to the next person. This is the basic movement, but people tend to improvise in fancier patterns so their partner has to keep up (my informant jokingly told me that this is why North Indians tend to be good dancers). This style of Garba (also known as dandiya-raas) is associated with Krishna. “Raas” means play/dance. This style is supposed to imitate a sword fight.

I am glad that my informant knows so much about the symbolism behind this dance, as it adds so much more depth and beauty to the understanding of this practice. I also find it interesting that there is a rendition that combines the idea of creation and the flow of time with battle.

Bobbie the Wonder Dog

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Silverton, OR
Performance Date: April 26, 2017
Primary Language: English

My informant comes from a very small and fascinating town in Oregon. The town idolizes this dog named Bobbie the Wonder Dog, and he has become almost a symbol of the town itself. Here is a transcription of her account:

Informant: “So, um – have you seen ‘Parks and Recreation’?”

Me: “It’s my favorite show.”

Informant: “So you know Little Sebastian*?”

Me: “Yes.”

Informant: “We have our own Little Sebastian in Silverton. So, this is a real thing – you can look this up and get all sorts of pictures because we have murals dedicated to this creature everywhere. There is a border collie, a dog, uh, called Bobbie the Wonder Dog. It’s a real thing. In like the 1900s or something, it went with its family on a road trip like halfway across the country and got left behind and made its way back to Silverton without them, so it’s considered Bobbie the Wonderdog and we have, like, um, we have a statue to it, uh… in the middle of the town. We have a bunch of murals to it that showcase its journey, and uh we have a Bobbie the Wonderdog Parade. It’s called- its nickname is The Pet Parade, and everybody- it’s generally in May and everybody brings out their pets, which vary from frogs, to goats, to alpacas, uh… horses-”

Me: “No dogs in Silverton. Or cats.”

Informant: “A few dogs. A few cats. But it’s a lot of farm animals. There are some horses too, you know, but um, I feel like goats are like the peak- oh lots of people walk their chickens. That’s a thing too. Or they’ll like take them in the… like, wagons and move them around. And it’s like a big thing like Bobbie the Wonderdog- I took a drawing class, and one of the first things we learned how to do was draw this dog. It was like really important.”

Me: “This is so wholesome, I love it.”

Informant: “Yeah, it’s like on the internet. Bobbie the Wonderdog, Silverton Oregon.”

I love these quirky small town-specific traditions and festivals. They seem so bizarre and difficult to understand for anyone not a native to this small town, but for anyone who grew up in Silverton, Bobbie is just a part of everyday local culture.

 

*Little Sebastian is a running joke on the NBC television show “Parks and Recreation”. He is a miniature horse that has achieved celebrity status in the small town in which the show takes place, for no reason other than simply existing. Residents lose their minds whenever he makes an appearance at a festival, much to the confusion of characters from outside of the town.

Wren Day

Nationality: Irish
Age: 54
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Dublin, Ireland
Performance Date: March 1st, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Irish

Background Information:

Informant is 54-year-old woman living in Dublin, Ireland. She was raised in rural southern Ireland. This festival called Wren Day is celebrated on St. Stephen’s Day, December 26th. It is not a custom I have observed in Dublin, and seems to mainly be confined to rural areas, particularly in the south but it has also been seen in the Nordic countries. Wren in this tale is pronounced like “wran,” owing to the southern dialect. She learned of this festival from experiencing it, and she didn’t particularly enjoy it as she found the costumes scary. She is signified in this conversation by the initials C.D.

Main Piece:

C.D.: Wren Day is always celebrated on St. Stephen’s Day at home. It’s not so much a festival that everyone celebrates, rather there are a few people that celebrate it and try and drag the rest of us into it. It involves men, usually, dressing up in straw outfits and masks and parading through the town singing songs. Back home, they’d work their way around the mountain and would knock on your door and sing a song – sometimes it had words, and other times it was just sounds, like the Native American chants – and they’d expect a penny in return. I always thought they were terrifying, dressed up like giant haybales and shouting in the front garden. In the village there would be a kind of parade, where the marchers would hold up these long wooden poles with nets on the top, that was supposed to symbolize the catching of the wren. I think they used to actually catch a wren sometimes, but maybe that’s gone out of fashion over time.

A: Do you know what the wren symbolized?

C.D.: It was meant to symbolize the old year being put away and the new year coming in. You’d only find the wren in winter, so by caging it and putting control on it the people are sort of forcing in the spring, maybe like a Groundhog Day style thing?

A: And do you remember the kinds of songs they’d sing?

C.D.: Like I said, I was usually too scared of them to really listen to what they were saying, but when they’d come to the house they’d end their songs in “If you haven’t got a penny then a hapenny will do,/ If you haven’t got a hapenny then God bless you!” That’s usually when my mam would hand them a penny or two, as they wouldn’t go away until you gave it to them.

Performance Context:

This piece of folklore was related to me over the phone, as I am in California and she is in Ireland. I asked her about any festivals she had at home and she said that this was the strangest one she could think of that she actually experienced.

My Thoughts:

The wren is an interesting bird, as it is found in both the Catholic and Celtic traditions. In the Celtic tradition, the wren was a sacred bird that sang through the winter. In this sense, it symbolized enduring life through the harshest months. By sacrificing a wren at this time of year, the people ritualistically “killed” winter and ushered in the path for the spring birds. In the Christian tradition, the wren is thought to have betrayed St. Stephen, revealing his position whilst he hid from his enemies. This allowed for the tradition to endure through pre-Christian times until now, and explains the current dating of this festival to St. Stephen’s Day. This festival, then, projects the human and religious calendars onto the natural year cycle by eliminating winter and ushering in the Spring. Also, the idea that it is mostly men that participate in it speaks to the Catholic patriarchy in Ireland at the time that this tradition was prevalent.

Duanwu Festival

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: U.S.
Performance Date: March 18, 2017
Primary Language: English

This friend of mine heard I was finding people to collect folklore and decided to help. He came up with several origins of traditional Chinese festivals. For this particular festival, he said he learned it from his middle school teacher when they were studying a poem the protagonist wrote in literature class. 

Story:

”

During the Spring and Autumn Period in China history, there is a patriotic poet called Qu Yuan from the Country of Chu.  In 229 BC., Country Qin invaded eight cities of Chu, but then invited King of Chu to Qin to make a peace treaty. Believing this is King of Qin’s scheme, Qu Yuan tried to reason with King of Chu, but only irritated the king and got himself exiled. King of Chu accepted the offer and did went to Qin, but as soon as he got there he was held in captive. King of Chu was full of regret and worry, and died three years later in Qin. After he died, Qin continued to invade Chu, and finally seize the capital. During Qu Yuan’s exile, he heard of the death of the King and the news that the capital was seized, he realized his country no long exists. Depressed, he drowned himself in the river. The day he committed suicide later became the day of Duanwu.

After Qu Yuan’s death, the used-to-be citizen of Chu were touched and full of grief. They went to the river to mourn over Qu Yuan. Fishermen rowed the boat on the river over and over again hoping to find his body but all failed. Someone then threw the rice rolls and other food into the river, hoping these food was enough for the fish in the river so they would not hurt Qu Yuan’s body. Everyone else followed him and began to threw food in the river. Every year of this day people continued to do that in memory of Qu Yuan, and these activity gradually became the Duanwu Festival’s traditions today —  eating the special rice roll Zongzi and rowing Dragon boat.

”

Thoughts:

Duanwu Festival is one of the most important traditional festivals in China. It does not mean much for me, except that this is the day we would eat a special and delicious food meant for this day only, called Zongzi (made of sticky rice and various other ingredients of your choice, served in a plant’s leaf). I kinda know this festival is originally held in memory of Qu Yuan but never know why. This is educational.