Category Archives: Holidays

Holidays and holiday traditions

Chinese New Year Celebration – Chinese American Folk Ritual/Festival

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/30/2023
Language: English

1. Text

When asked to share a folk tradition, the informant responded with the following:

“For Chinese New Year, when I was younger I would fly from China to US during my winter break and go celebrate [the holiday] at my grandma’s house in k-town (Korea Town).”

“We would make dumplings and in some of the dumplings my grandma would put a dime or penny or date in them. If you get the special dumpling, you get $1 or $5.”

“After the meal, we would play mahjong and watch Chinese New Year celebration live stream. This was a tradition that my grandma had done since my dad and his siblings were kids, so it’s a pretty long tradition”

“We would try to wear a lot of red for the new years. Usually my grandma would make dish too because my last name sounds like fish but also my dad loves eating fish.”

“Everyone gave out red envelopes to the kids, usually containing 50 to 100 dollars.”

2. Context

Informant relation to the piece:

The informant is Chinese-American and is currently a college student in the US. The informant shares this family ritual from their memory of participating in it. The informant’s grandma is the one who initiated this ritual, which is also a commonly practiced ritual/festival in Chinese culture.

Informant interpretation of the piece:

It is a ritual that brings together the family from different places in the world. It is a festive one since there is good food, fun activities, and presents.

3. Analysis

Chinese New Year is a traditional Chinese holiday and festival on the new year of the lunar calendar. It usually spans a week or two, and on each day there are different customs and rituals to perform. The main one is on the first day of the new year where the family gathers with all the relatives on the husband or father’s side of the family, which is closest to the ritual collected above from the informant. Since this ritual is only performed once a year, it is regarded with great importance, which explains why the informant would be flying across the Pacific from China in order to perform this ritual with their grandma in America. Chinese New Year is the Chinese equivalent of Thanksgiving for Americans. It serves as an excuse and incentive for the entire family to get together, which is pleasant for some and unpleasant for others. Similar to the ritual of Thanksgiving, there is a set of traditional Chinese foods that are prepared and eaten on Chinese New Year. In the ritual collected above, the foods are specific and personal to the informant, which are dumplings and fish, showing that the traditional foods eaten on New Years differ in each family. Unlike the trademark turkey that is eaten on Thanksgiving, there is not one food that is always eaten on Chinese New Year since the ritual is performed by Chinese people spread across different regions, which would have different foods available, especially for a family like the informant’s in the US. Another detail worth noting is the giving of red envelopes and the money prize for the special dumplings. Since Chinese culture places great emphasis on monetary prosperity, these customs for New Years reinforce to children that there is luck required to gain prosperity and the importance of money. Whereas Thanksgiving has no such customs, reflecting the contrast between American and Chinese culture on the concept of money for children.

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.

Costa Rican Independence Day Traditions/Celebrations

Context: RJ is currently a university student and grew up in San Jose, Costa Rica until her family moved to the United States before she started high school. She was kind enough to share some traditional aspects of celebrating the Costa Rican Independence Day, and did so by writing all she knew/remembered in a document.

Collection:

RJ: All of these are aspects of and traditions from Costa Rican Independence Day, which we celebrated on September 15th: Women dress up in traditional faldas that follow the color scheme of the national flag. It is also worn with a white blouse that completes the outfit, it has blue and red stripes on it. This is a typical latin american practice. Every country wears their flags colors (duh) Men wear “campesinos” outfits which are khakis, a white shirt (collared usually), with a straw hat, or farmers type hat. Men also hold red banderas in their hands (wave them around during fan or wear them around their necks.

At every school around the country, young children practice typical folk dances for months in preparation for independence day. When September 15 roles around, all the kids dress up and perform in the parade on the streets. This happens in the city, the beach, the mountains, etc. For my school, elementary students performed their dance, by grade,  on the recess field (which was a huge soccer field with lots of grass) and the whole school came and watched (k-12) including teachers and parents.

Lantern Walk: These lanterns (faroles) are homemade. You can buy them in the store and then fold them up. Sometimes you make them in class. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some look like the typical homes of Costa Rica, “casitas típicas” or ox carts. Others are just cylindrical though its up to the consumer which one they want to walk with for the parade. At my school we would all gather in our classrooms at 8am, dressed up with our lanterns, and then walk around the entire school together to the national anthem before all gathering in the field to begin the parade. 

We always had arroz con pollo with frijoles molidos, papas, and plantains. It’s a really easy dish to make in large amounts and I’m sure people around the country ate the same food after they paraded.

Analysis: The traditions of this holiday seem to reflect the culture of the common people of Costa Rica. The food eaten is not some special and expensive dish like one may eat for a big holiday, but rather a food that everyone in the country has some access too, celebrating the collective in the country. Similarly, the clothes worn represent both patriotism and the dress that would typically be worn by the lower classes of society rather than the elite class. There is a constant presence of the youth performing many of these traditions, potentially a representation of Costa Rica as a young nation and placing the emphasis on the nation’s future. The folk tradition of lanterns again puts the focus on the common people of the country, having the shapes of traditional houses or common farming equipment. Additionally, the symbolism of light behind within these shapes shows an understanding that the heart of their country resides in the the common people.

Ukrainian Christmas

Context: This festival comes from my friend JZ, a USC student who grew up in a Chinese Ukrainian household in Toronto. He celebrated both aspects of Chinese and Ukrainian culture and was kind enough to share some of the experiences he’s had with that in his life with me.

Collection:

JZ: Ukraine is very religious, so the entire country is basically Orthodox Christians. The entire family would gather for our Christmas and there would be a Christmas eve service that everyone went to and there was also a Christmas day service. The dinner before Christmas Day always had to be vegetarian… well there could be fish, but everything else had to be vegetarian. After the Christmas day service everything was pretty much normal, Ukrainians are big on pierogi and cabbage rolls. Food was a massive thing, my Ukrainian grandparents would get pissed, like really mad, if we didn’t eat everything. The only thing that made our Christmas Ukrainian was the food, everything else was standard with what I’ve heard from other Christmas traditions. The essential things was pierogis, cabbage rolls, borsch, sausages, shit like that. Basic European stuff.

Analysis: This Ukrainian variation on Christmas points to some of the important aspects of Ukrainian culture. Religious piety is the biggest one, as it seemed from JZ’s telling that service, both before and after Christmas was given, as if everyone did it. Where I am from, people tend to vary on how religious they are, and it is common for people to skip any kind of religious services all together. In Ukraine it is clear that the people have a generally homogenized religion and all follow relatively piously, although it could be the case that JZ’s family was particularly religious. The other difference that JZ’s celebration had with other celebrations I have heard of is the food. Many people would consider traditional Christmas food to be some kind of large meat, like turkey or ham, and an assortment of side dishes, at least in the United States. In Ukraine it makes sense that they eat popular Ukrainian foods, as these are the foods that they have the most access to.

Chinese Moon Festival

Context: This festival comes from my friend JZ, a USC student who grew up in a Chinese Ukrainian household in Toronto. He celebrated both aspects of Chinese and Ukrainian culture and was kind enough to share some of the experiences he’s had with that in his life with me.

Collection:

JZ: Lunar cycles are so big in China there’s so many festivals that are associated with them. I remember this one, its called just Moon Festival. I don’t really recall the story behind it but you have to eat moon cakes for it. You literally never eat moon cakes outside of the moon festival, I hated them they suck so much. There are all of these flavors that they are filled with but I never liked any of them. The typical go to filling is this red bean paste that is really popular in China. It’s sweet but weird. Chinese people like to put weird things in their desserts.

Analysis: This festival is in line with the other things that JZ told me about Chinese culture and celebration. For one thing, the emphasis on the lunar cycles indicates that China is a very cyclical culture that has reverence for its past and history. The traditional eating of moon cakes points towards China’s emphasis on food and food as a ritual that brings family together. Although the actual moon cake may not be very good, it is still traditionally eaten because it is a way to bring the family together under one roof at one table all eating the same thing.