Category Archives: Holidays

Holidays and holiday traditions

Purim – Holiday/Traditions

Nationality: Israeli-American
Age: 17
Occupation: High School Student
Residence: Bellevue, Washington
Language: English

Text:

The basis of the celebration for Purim is about a historical event. The Persian monarchy cast an order to kill all the Jewish people but the king’s Jewish wife was able to convince him to send another order for Jewish people to defend themselves. The Jewish people won so the holiday is a celebration of winning and not dying. The celebration for the Informant’s family is to create puppets of the characters in the story and then act it out for the parents. In general, the holiday is a chance to dress up, sometimes as characters in the story but in more modern celebrations, people are able to dress up as whatever they want. People also make gift baskets to give to friends and neighbors. People are encouraged to drink a lot, party, and have fun.

Context:

The informant is from an Orthodox Jewish family and engaged in this holiday while growing up. They learned about it from their parents and the community around them. The informant said they enjoy the party aspect and they liked having two Halloweens as a kid. When they were younger, they also dressed up, at first as characters from the story but eventually they did other things like being a cat. They mentioned that since this is basically the only Jewish holiday that is about Jewish people winning rather than remembering tragedy, they’ve always enjoyed it.

Analysis:

The holiday is meant to be a celebration with drinking and partying. Allowing people to celebrate through fun costumes both historically and in modern times gets them into the story of the celebration even more. Historically, the Jewish people would have celebrated winning the fight and surviving. By dressing up as the characters who would have been celebrating, Jewish people are able to tie themselves back to that period and the emotions that would have been felt at the time.

Although historically, people would only dress up as characters from the story, this has changed to be a more broad costume party in modern times. This might have been influenced by Halloween as the two holidays spread throughout cultures towards each other. The informant even mentioned how they were always excited to have two Halloween celebrations.

This holiday is also a community event where people come together to celebrate the victory of the past. Along with the celebration, people give gifts to each other to continue the social connections they have. Giving gifts is present in many Jewish traditions and this one is no different. Gifting something is a way of telling someone you care about them, that you are thinking about them, and that you want them to have something from you.

The informant mentioned that when they were younger, the kids of the family were expected to perform the story through a puppet show. This is a fun way of teaching children the story of the holiday while also making it fun for them to engage with it. As this holiday is one of the few that commemorates a victory, the parents would want to tell children the full story with all the details.

Banging Pots and Pans on New Years 

Nationality: Mexican-Filipino American
Age: 22
Occupation: Engineer
Residence: Irvine, CA
Language: English

Text

“Every New Year’s Eve, right when the clock strikes midnight, my family rushes outside and we start banging on pots and pans like our lives depend on it. It’s loud, chaotic, and silly if you are a neighbor watching next door.

We don’t do this tradition just to make noise for fun, we are scaring away bad spirits. My Lola would say, ‘Make it so loud the malas (bad luck) can’t follow us into the New Year.” i feel like this tradition is not about silence and reflection. It’s more about being loud, communal, and kind of joyful. It shakes things up and clears space for something better.

Every year, no matter where I am, I find something to bang. When I’m not at home, I’ll use a cup and spoon if need be. Because for me, the noise is more than just a tradition. It is a way of saying that we made it to a new year and that we should chase bad spirits away and welcome what is to come next.”

Context 

The informant reflects on a recurring family ritual: banging pots and pans at midnight on New Year’s Eve to ward off bad luck. She traces the tradition to her lola (grandmother) and describes how this action has remained central to her family’s New Year’s celebration.

The informant highlighted how rituals passed down through generations become markers of cultural identity even when performed in different settings from where her grandmother originally would do this to where her family does it now.

My interpretation 

From a folklore perspective, banging pots and pans on New Year’s Eve functions as a protective folk belief ritual that’s aligned with what James Frazer termed magic superstitions. In this case it would be conversion magic where action is required to prevent misfortune. The practice is not institutionally religious but it operates within a system of vernacular spirituality and community belief that’s passed down through generations in domestic spaces.

The ritual also fits within a life cycle of belief systems surrounding transitions and thresholds like what Victor Turner would call a liminal moment. The striking of the pots is part of a ritual of noise that marks and manages a cosmic shift. Symbolically, the sound disorients evil, clears spiritual residue from the old year, and prepares the household for prosperity.

This ritual functions as both cultural preservation and performance of identity. It’s an informal act of heritage that resists assimilation by rooting the celebrant in a shared memory and practice.

Simbang Gabi

Age: 89
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Corona, CA
Language: English, Tagalog

Text

“I was born in the Philippines and grew up there. One ritual that stood out to me was Simbang Gabi. Every December 16th, we would begin nine days of dawn Masses leading up to Christmas. We woke up before the sun, wrapped ourselves in warm clothes, and walked to church with the stars still out. We called this Simbang Gabi, which means ‘night mass’ even though it happened just before sunrise. This originally was for farmers so they could worship before going into the fields. Even though this is a novena, it always felt like a festival too. After mass we would have puto bumbong, bibingka, and salabat.

When I moved to the United States back in the day, I missed Simbang Gabi. Eventually,I found a Filipino church group and started celebrating it again. Sometimes it’s at night instead of dawn since people work during the day. It’s not exactly the same, but the spirit is there.

Simbang Gabi is not just about going to church. It’s about preparing your heart for Jesus Christ. It’s about hope and light in the darkness. And every year, we do it again, not because we have to but because it reminds us who we are.”

Context

This narrative was shared by an 89-year-old Filipino woman currently living in Southern California. She was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States around the 1960s. This story was told as a reflective oral account of the Simbang Gabi ritual, a Filipino Catholic tradition she participated in throughout her life, both in the Philippines and in the diaspora. 

This informant is a respected elder in her community and has acted as a cultural bearer for her children and grandchildren. She continues to practice elements of the ritual at home and at church with her church group.

My Interpretation

From a folklore perspective, Simbang Gabi functions as both a life-cycle and calendar ritual, which is tied to the Advent season and culminates on Christmas Eve. it is a clear example of intangible cultural heritage that is passed through oral tradition, communal memory, and ritual performance. The informant’s account also demonstrates how folklore adapts across geographies while retaining its symbolic core and responding to the needs of diasporic communities.

The ritual serves multiple functions since it is devotional, communal, performative, and sensory. It creates a liminal space between night and day, preparing the faithful spiritually while reaffirming cultural bonds. The informant’s memory of the Mass as both a sacred and celebratory event illustrates the blurring of ritual and festival, which is a common feature in folk tradition. This narrative also highlights how older members of a cultural group serve as active bearers of tradition, keeping practices alive even in new cultural contexts. 

Lechon

Age: 51
Occupation: English
Residence: Corona, CA

Text

“When I think about big Filipino parties like weddings, baptisms, birthdays, Christmas, and even some funerals, the first thing that comes to mind is the lechon.

Lechon is a whole roasted pig, skin golden and crispy, head and all. It’s not just food; it’s also a spectacle. When the lechon arrives, someone always yells, “andiyan na ang lechon!” (the lechon is here), like someone famous just arrived. People gather around it, phones out, kids ready to grab, and family members grabbing their plates to have a piece.

Here in California, we usually order it from a caterer. It arrives crispy and ready to eat. The most important part of the lechon is the skin. It’s crispy, salty, and slightly sweet.

Lechon isn’t just something we are eating. It is a real celebration that marks abundance, pride, and hospitality. It shows that you spared no effort to feed your guests, too. Sometimes it can become a competition of who had the best lechon.

Even when there are other yummy dishes like pancit or lumpia, the lechon is always the centerpiece. It almost feels like the lechon is the guest of honor.

When I see lechon on the table, I don’t see just food. I see a tradition. I see a family showing love the Filipino way, which is full of laughter and full bellies.”

Context

The informant of this narrative was born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from the Philippines and grew up attending traditional Filipino gatherings in both domestic and community settings. Her story centers on lechon, which is a whole roasted pig that serves as the focal point of large celebratory events. The presence of lechon transforms an ordinary gathering into a culturally significant event, and its performance carries a deep symbolic and social meaning.

My Interpretation

From a folklore perspective, lechon functions as a material symbol of abundance, kinship, and collective identity. While it is technically a food item, it is best understood as a ritual object within the context of Filipino celebrations. Its preparation and presentation serve as a ritualized performance, where cultural meaning is enacted, remembered, and passed down.

The centrality of lechon to the events positions it as a symbolic quest of honor. The pig, therefore, is not just food but a performative symbol that embodies both economic investment and cultural pride. Its role aligns with the folkloristic principle that everyday practice scan function as nonverbal, expressive culture, encoding shared beliefs and values.

Lechon also serves as a visual and sensory expression of Filipino-American identity in diaspora. Even when the preparation changes from backyard firepits in the Philippines to pre-ordered catering in California, the core symbolic structure remains there. This demonstrates the multiplicity and variation that define folklore: traditions persist not because they are static but because they adapt meaningfully to new environments while preserving key elements. 

In this sense, lechon is more than just a cuisine. It is a ritual marker of festivity, community, and cultural continuity.

Tang Yuan

Nationality: Taiwanese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Animation Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA / Queens, NY
Language: English

Text:

“One of the foods that we made is um.. Tang Yuan, which is like a… kind of like mochi? It’s like a glutinous rice ball and then on the inside is sesame paste. And so, it… it’s usually typically eaten during the New Year. Um… it’s just like kind of a dessert. I know it’s been more popularized within like, um… like, Taiwanese dessert places nowadays, or like dessert places in general, but they’re usually served as like a treat for introducing the New Year. Um… a while ago, like when I was really really young — I’d say like before I was five — my grandma used to make Tang Yuan by like… She didn’t have the sesame paste, it was just like flour balls, I guess? Like she’d make the sort of like, dough out of rice flour and water and then she’d dye it into different colors and like, cut it up into strips and then she’d have me and my cousins like prepare the dough balls together. And then she’d prepare a kind of uh, kind of soup, like a sweet soup to go with it. Um… I believe also typically… I prefer to eat it plain, but my dad um… My grandparents on my dad’s side — and my dad — they both kind of… they have like a somewhat Cantonese background, so they end up drinking it with like, this fermented wine, like rice wine. And it… has an ‘interesting’ taste, it’s like… it’s like the sweetness of the Tang Yuan on itself is pretty good, and it’s like, the fermented rice wine is very bitter, and very pungent…. and so it’s like, I don’t know how they acquired the taste for it but, um, my dad typically eats it with this sort of rice wine. And also, when you eat it… I think it represents currency. ’cause the ‘yuan’ at the end… and ‘tang’ is usually like ‘sweet.’ So like ‘sweet money.'”

Context:

Tang Yuan are a traditional Chinese dessert, although they can be sweet or savory. They are often made for holidays and festivals, especially the Lunar New Year. There are several variations on Tang Yuan recipes, but the most common one involves making a dough out of glutenous rice flour and water, stuffing the dough balls with a sweet black sesame paste, boiling, and serving warm in a sweet syrup. Tang Yuan are said to represent togetherness and completeness.

Analysis:

Dishes like Tang Yuan are often made for festivals to commemorate calendar cycles and bring people together. They represent connections to community and a sense of continuity of tradition and culture. For informant JC, Tang Yuan are a dish that holds significance beyond the process of cooking and eating — they play a role in connecting him to his Taiwanese identity as he and his family navigate American culture and expectations of assimilation.