Category Archives: Childhood

Doljanchi

Text:


“So when I was one, I had this huge birthday party, and they laid out certain things — like a stethoscope, or money, or rice that symbolizes success. And then the baby has to pick one of them, and that’ll determine their path in life. A stethoscope would mean a doctor or something like that. I think I chose the rice. That’s from my Korean side.”

Context:


Doljanchi (also Dol) is the traditional Korean first-birthday celebration, and, officially, the Doljabi ceremony plays a vital role as an object-choosing ritual. Objects placed before the child vary by family and period but generally include objects that symbolize prosperity, health, scholarship, longevity, and professional achievements. The informant, who is half-Korean, inherited this practice from her father’s side and recalled it with pride, linking it to what she saw as a broader Korean cultural ethos of persistence and upward mobility.

Analysis:


Doljabi is one of the most recognizable folk rites in Korean culture, a fortune-telling performance at one of the earliest celebrations of a child’s life. Its endurance, even among second-generation Korean Americans, speaks to its profound cultural resonance. But most importantly, it’s not truly believed that the child’s choice is literally determining their future. The ceremony is more of an aspirational blend of parental hope and communal adornment. The informant’s observation is especially rich in that she ties the Doljabi to an understanding of Korean national identity, where the practice is not simply a matter of family heritage but an expression of a people’s relationship to ambition, hard labor, and prophetic evolving throughout life itself. And this shift from family tradition to ethnic pride is exactly how folk traditions maintain meaning in diasporic contexts: they become bearers of a larger tale about who a people are and where they have come from.

Handmade Envelop Bookmark

Age: 20s

Text:

Context:

Informant-The significance of my envelop bookmark was to encourage me to read since I would decorate them to match the book cover and would leave my personal reviews in them!

Analysis:

The informant spoke to me about the evolution of their bookmarks, how they shared them with friends, and customized them over time. Their process of creating them and showing others how to make them reminded me of origami projects teachers would teach young children, or kids showing each other how to make cootie catchers or paper airplanes in their downtime, during recess, or at camp. Crafts such as these are a way of entertaining oneself with few resources. This craft, in particular, enhanced the activity of reading. These examples of material culture give us insight into what crafts children around the world filled their free time with!

Sana Sana

Age: 24

TEXT: Sana Sana Colita de Rana

CONTEXT:

Informant- “Okay, so Sana Sana is, I guess I think it’s like, when I’ve looked it up online, it’s supposed to be like a nursery rhyme. It’s usually what people use to consult the children in their family when they’re not feeling well, when they’re hurt, which I think means heel heal- something like that. So the full story for me is that I grew up, I grew up having stomach issues, problems with my GI, or GI issues, um, problems with my intestines as they were like distant I was a kid. And so I was always in pain. And I was especially in pain, like if I ate something that didn’t agree with me. And at that point, I didn’t have it under control like I did now, so it really any little thing would hurt me. And my grandma would always, I go, I’d run to my grandma and I’d tell her that my stomach was hurting or something like that. And so she would like sit with me or she’d lay me down and she’d put her hand. It was specifically her right hand, her right hand on my stomach, and she would say “sana sana colita de rana” and she would change it. She’d say make (informant’s) belly feel so much better. And then she’d like, as she’s like rubbing it, then she’d like pretend like she was pulling the illness out of me and like grab it off my stomach. So, I guess my relationship to it is that it reminds me of my grandma. I even as an adult, like even when I was 18 years old, I would still say, grandma, my stomach hurts. “Can you sana sana me?” And she would come over and son us son on me… I don’t really remember the very first time I heard it. It’s just always been something that she’s done for me. Um. Yeah, I guess it is a sense of the comfort for me. Cultural reference, obviously, for me being Hispanic and like that, but it is a sense of comfort for me that she would use it. I don’t know if it was mind like a minding her mentality kind of thing that I swear every time she did do it, I ended up feeling better after that. So that is my full story of sana sana. That’s my relationship to it. It kind of follows my relationship with my grandma. And I she would always use it when I wasn’t feeling well, mainly with my intestinal issues.”

ANALYSIS:

In the story, the informant tells me of their experience with this traditionally, Hispanic saying and how it was used to comfort her as a child with intestinal issues even into her adulthood. She goes into whether or not she believed that just her grandmother saying this and performing a specific hand motion tricked her mind into making her feel better, but regardless, she believes wholeheartedly that the same always made her feel better. I know this informant quite well and during times where I myself have gotten hurt or felt sick she has performed Sana Sana on me and I think that it’s a very sweet and caring way of sharing culture with someone else.

Brutal Barney

TEXT:

“I hate you, you hate me. Let’s get together and kill Barney.”

CONTEXT:

The informant from Pennsylvania shared that around 2010-2012 they heard many songs sung by their classmates regarding the brutal dismantlement of Barney and his purple body parts.

Informant- “In elementary school, there would be like different songs about like Barney, like the purple dinosaur Barney being like violently eviscerate, and it was like “I hate you you hate me. Let’s get together and kill Barney,” and it would be like, “with a big sharp ax…” and something something something.”’ 

Informant-“A Wikipedia page somewhere dedicated to violent playground songs about Barney I think one of them like the punchline is like flushing him down the toilet” 

Informant-“I’m not entirely sure what the purpose was and I feel like it was just like other classmates like other other kids we were singing them and there was like that whole like kind of urban legend that like Barney had gone crazy on on live television And I don’t know that that was true.”

ANALYSIS:

I myself recall hearing similar songs relating to Barney as a child growing up around the same time as the informant and from our seedings feel that another great example of this morphed folk speech can be explained in Davies, “Jokes That Follow Mass-Mediated Disasters” & Mechling, Jay. “‘Cheaters Never Prosper’ and Other Lies Adults Tell Kids: Proverbs and the Culture Wars over Character.” I especially think that Mechling explores the thought behind children finding great joy in twisting the songs they hear, such as the theme song from the children’s show Barney, and making it into something entirely their own, which also raises their status (at least in their own mind) to a higher level of maturity.

Nicaraguan Duendes “Elves”

Age: 74

Text

Informant: “When me and my brother were younger, we sometimes went to a farm with our grandparents and dad. At night, we used to sit in the back of a pickup truck as adults drove, and when we were sitting there, we saw little kids following us. I told the adults that I saw little kids following us on the road, but they were running really fast. They were running at the speed of the truck. Only me and my brother saw them but none of the adults could see them. My grandparents and dad asked what the kids looked like so we described them as little kids with a red hat and backwards feet. The adults told me that they were elves. I tried reaching my hand out to grab the elves and the adults told me not to do that and I couldn’t reach my hand out to grab them because they were elves and they took children.”

Context:

The informant was born and raised in Nicaragua until they moved to the U.S. at 16 years old. When the informant was young, they rode on the bed of a pickup truck with their brother. One night, they saw elves following them and tried reaching out to grab them but failed. When they told their dad and grandpa, they were advised not to reach out for them because they could grab and steal them.

Analysis:

The story is unique in the sense that it’s not a common one told to children across an area. It is a personal experience, or a memorate. This reminds me of Lydia Hamessley’s “A Resisting Performance…” where she describes murder ballads being told in first-person perspective. I think folklore becomes more interesting when you’re hearing the stories directly from the source. It provides details that can get left out or aren’t shared when someone else is retelling the story.