Category Archives: Holidays

Holidays and holiday traditions

Eating Haroseth for Passover

Informant: M.M

Nationality: American

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): N/A

Age: 20

Occupation: Student

Residence: Denver, CO

Performance Date: 04/25/2024

M.M is 20 years old and is from Denver, Colorado. She is my friend from USC, and I asked her if there are any festivals or rituals she participates in regularly. She tells me about a holiday custom his dad does for Passover. 

“During Passover, which is this big Jewish holiday we celebrate every year, my dad always makes this special dish called Haroseth. It’s kind of a mix of fruits, nuts, and spices, and it tastes amazing. What’s cool about it is that the recipe has been passed down in our family for generations. Passover is pretty much the only time Dad ever cooks, which makes it extra special for me because Mom usually handles the kitchen. It’s kind of a treat to see him in there, taking over for once. This tradition has been around since I was a kid, and I interpret it as a way for us to connect back to our Jewish roots and kind of remember our ancestors through this longtime, shared recipe.”

Personally, this recipe keeps a part of their history alive. Culturally, it connects them to their Jewish heritage, celebrating freedom and resilience, which is what Passover is all about. Their passed-down recipe signifies how long this celebration has stood in their family and ancestors. So I assume this holiday was really important for them. It gives them a chance to remember where they came from and strengthen their identity.

Dia de Los Muertos

Nationality: Mexican/American
Primary Language: English
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Date: 4/21/2024

Text:

“In Mexico, the Day of the Dead is not just a time to mourn our loved ones who have passed but also a celebration of life. Families create altars with photos, foods, and items the deceased loved. It’s a colorful, vibrant expression of remembrance.”

Context:

E.C. first experienced Day of the Dead with her family in Mexico City. She explains that this tradition reflects the Mexican view on mortality and the afterlife. She remembers her grandma explaining that it is connection rather than separation.

Analysis:

This celebration challenges a lot of common perceptions of death in other cultures. As Mexicans take it in as a part of life to be embraced and celebrated. It’s a powerful reflection of how cultural practices can shape attitudes toward life and death. And how their interpretation is a more lively and uplifting one compared to other cultures.

Chinese New Year Festival Foods

Context: AT is a 22 year old student at USC. Her family is Taiwanese, and they celebrate Chinese New Year by cooking a variety of specific foods. AT listed these for me, along with the reasons behind why.

Text: “For one, we eat fish, because in Chinese, there’s a lot of words that sound the same and fish sounds the same as wealth. There’s a saying that every year you get more fish, you get more wealth. We also make this like fortune? cake? Or prosperity cake? It’s called fa gao, you can look it up. We make it because the word for fortune sounds like the word for rise, like bread rising. It’s really good! There’s also sweet rice cake, because it’s sticky, and the word for sticky sounds the same as the word for year. Oh, and of course, dumplings, because they look like the old fashioned coins or like ingots of gold they used to use. Let me think… oranges too, because one of the ways to say the fruit orange sounds like the way to say good luck”

Analysis: AT gave me a list of foods, all that are made and eaten due to a perceived relationship with something they sound or look like. The choice of food seems very sympathetic-magic based, specifically homeopathic magic based. Since the word for the item of food sounds like the word for another preferred item or outcome, engaging with that imitation is thought to produce said item/outcome, in this case, producing fortune in the form of money or in the form of luck. Making a food that either sounds or looks like luck/fortune is equated to making luck/fortune for oneself.

Pan de Muerto

Context: the informant, A.F., is a 21 year old USC student. Her family is Mexican, when asked about rituals or festivals, she brought up Dia de Los Muertos. Before she explained her family customs, she did give me a small disclaimer, saying that a lot of this feels normal to her, and so she wasn’t sure what would/wouldn’t matter.

Text: The informant explained that when her family celebrates Dia de Los Muertos, they always buys a specific bread, known as “pan de muerto”. She described pan de muerto as a round sweet bread with a cross on top; along with this, she explained that her family also makes the favorite foods of their loved ones who have passed. When asked if she leaves some out for ancestors, she told me that they do that alongside eating it. Her family puts up an altar in their house with photos of loved ones who have passed, decorating it with their favorite foods, candles, and a vibrant flower that her family calls “cempasuchil.” She told me she wasn’t sure what flower it was exactly, but she thought it was a marigold. To offer the bread and food to them, her family places it on the altar.

Analysis: Pan de muerto, or bread of the dead, is a typical part of Dia de los Muertos festivities, as is creating an altar for the living to offer things to their dead loved ones. The act of placing food on the altar for them seems like an idea based in homeopathic sympathetic magic, in that items given to photos of loved ones will also be given to their spirits in the afterlife. As the photo looks like the person, affecting it in some way will also affect the person, even once they’ve passed. The bread itself, to the informant, is essentially just a normal sweet bread, but the intent behind offering it is what matters, rather than anything special about the bread.

Hou Yi and Chang’e Legend

Context: The informant is a 21 year old USC student and the daughter of two Taiwanese immigrants. She told me that she was definitely missing some details, but this is the story she learned growing up about the origins of the Mid-Autumn festival. The following are her exact words.

“So, there’s a couple, right, and the guy has like superhero strength – warrior vibes. At the time, there were 10 suns in the sky, and they were so hot that they were burning everything up, so he shot 9 of them out of the sky, leaving only one behind. As a reward, some higher power gave him this magic potion to make him stronger, but in the middle of the night, the day before he was meant to take it, his enemy poisoned it. For some reason, he still wanted to take it, so before he could, his wife drank the whole thing to save him. She ended up floating up into the moon, and so during the Mid-Autumn festival, because the moon is full, people say you can still see her silhouette up there.”

After doing some research, I found out that this is known as the story of Hou Yi and Chang’e, an immortal archer and his wife, the moon goddess before the latter becomes the moon goddess; this seems as if it would count as a mythic narrative. Not only is this the origin story of the sun, but it’s also the origin of the designs present on the moon. There’s a pretty common history of humans seeing faces where there are none (tree trunks) and looking at the moon would reasonably yield the same result. It’s not a story that anyone thinks could have happened, but also not a story that one would disagree with, considering the nature of it. Interestingly, there’s multiple different versions of this story online, including ones where Hou Yi goes mad with power rather than having his elixir poisoned and instead Chang’e must protect others by acting against him. It would be interesting to see if these differences revealed anything about typical historical conflicts that a certain region might have faced or a regional variation in values that might have caused this oicotypical difference.