Category Archives: Gestation, birth, and infancy

Generally up to the first year.

“String and Ring Test”

Nationality: Bahamian
Age: 22
Occupation: USC student athlete
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 1, 20155
Primary Language: English
Language: Broken English

The informant’s family comes from the Bahamas. She was born in the Bahamas and is a talented Bahamian woman. Her mother and she were extremely close and she learned a lot of the folklore that she shared with me from either her mother or from being with her mother. Eventually her family moved to Florida where they learned American cultures and were able to compare and contrast the two. 

The custom…

…is performed if a woman is pregnant at her baby shower. A ring is paced on a string and she holds one end of the string in one hand and the other end of the string in the other and pulls the string so that the ring will move. If the ring swings back and forward the baby is predicted to be a boy, and if the ring stays in the middle of the string the baby is predicted to be a girl.

The informant born in the Bahamas and raised in Florida, learned this custom as a young girl. Her mom would take her to baby showers of her mother’s friends. “It was so exciting” the informant said, “to go and experience the pregnant ladies as they would celebrate the new life they were creating”. At these baby showers, very similar to the ones we in American are use to, they perform different customs or rituals to either predict the baby’s gender, when it will be born, and just as a well to celebrate the almost to be mother and the new life she would carry inside of her. To explain it to me (a Wyoming resident with no exotic traditional background) the informant said, “You know like the old wives tales? That is kind of what this is. I know you’ve heard of the saying If the belly is high the baby is a girl and if the belly is low the baby will be a boy, it is really similar to that I guess. My culture just does it [the string and ring custom] for fun, but we actually believe in it [its results]”.

When asked how this tradition started, the informant replied, “I’m not sure, I’ve never asked where they got it from, I just remember it being performed at almost every Bahamian women’s baby showers I’ve went to. I am sure the ones where it wasn’t performed, probably the woman pregnant wanted the gender [of the baby] to be a surprise”. If mothers don’t perform this when they want the gender of their baby to be a surprise, I suspect that usually the custom has correct answers which is really neat.

Analysis…

I think that this custom, ritual, or tradition is sort of similar to the “belief” that Americans have about pregnancy from old wives tales. I was extremely happy when the informant connected her custom to a belief that I was familiar with to help me understand why they do it. Similar to here, I think that the custom is sort of for fun, but when it boils down to it, whatever the results of either how a person is carrying their child or what the string and ring test shows, is a legitimate prediction of the gender of their child until it is born and they are able to learn the truth.

Standard Birthday Customs

Nationality: American
Residence: Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Primary Language: English
Language: Some French proficiency

Standard Birthday Customs:

D.S.: In birthday cards, we would put a bunch of confetti in it, and so that when they opened up, it would go all over the place. Whenever I would go to a birthday party live, I would go there and bring poppers, to pop.

ME: Oh, I remember those.

D.S.: Yeah, just to make it more fun I guess.

ME: OK, so how that’s your way of demonstrating a right of passage in somebody’s life, as in another year, and another number.

D.S.: Yeah, celebrations. That’s right.

ME: And those are practical jokes. In it’s way, that’s a celebration.

D.S.: Yeah. One of my girlfriends, when we would get together for lunch on birthdays, I would buy them these ugly, hideous looking glasses that say “Happy Birthday,” and I make ‘em wear ‘em, all during the lunch. So, that’s kinda fun. Trying to embarrass them, you know.

ME: Do you remember being the subject of an embarrassing practical joke, recently? Anything that comes to mind?

D.S.: Um, no. I can’t think of anything.

ME: Thank you.

 

D.S. discusses her customs of practical jokes done towards others, especially with regards to representing a right of passage; a transition from one life stage to another. It is widely spread to celebrate birthdays, although certain customs come with different families, or even cultural groups.

The Dol

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: El Centro, CA
Performance Date: 4/15/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

“Back in the old country when medicine would be scarce and people would die incredibly young, it was a feat for a baby to live past the age of one. That is why now, the baby’s first birthday is incredibly important in Korean culture. It is…so highly celebrated…On a first birthday, it is traditional to put out objects that can determine the baby’s future. Like, they put out money, a pencil, a microphone…and some other items. I forget. I haven’t been to a Dol in such a long time. Actually they just put out the microphone. Like, since the tradition was available for years, now because the entertainment industry is recent. Basically, the baby will crawl to oneo f the obejcts. If the baby crawls to the pencil, they will become a teaher. If they crawl to the microphone, they will be famous, and if they go to the money they will be rich.”

Context/Analysis: The informant first heard about the Dol tradition during her own Dol, but does not really remember it because she was so young. Later in her life, she went to more Dols and gained more information on how they proceed and are performed. She has been to two other Dols. They are significant to her because they were the Dols of her first cousins. The Dol is a tradition that has been significant/practiced since Ancient times. It is supposed to symbolize a liminal point, in which after your Dol, you have chosen your future.

For another version of this, please see: Sung, Hannah. What a Dol. 29 Vol. Toronto: Rogers Publishing Limited, 2012.

Body painting at the fair

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/2015
Primary Language: English

My informant is a regular attendant of the Oregon Country Fair. The Oregon Country Fair is an annual non-profit craft fair held in Eugine Oregon held on the second weekend of July. In its inception it was known as the Oregon Renaissance Faire,  however in 1977 it changed its name to better reflect what it represented. At the start of every day there is a booth of painters near the entrance of the fair who offer to pain the chests and faces of anyone who desires to have their body painted. While the face paints are just for fun, the body or chest painting serves a much more important purpose to regular attendants of the fair. According to my informant, serious female fairgoers are “almost expected to paint their chest.” This is not a mandatory thing for women who attend the fair to do, but it is a culturally accepted and encouraged action” and that “when you see a women walking around the figure 8 (the fairground) without a shirt and a painted chest you know that they are a part of the community.” The significance of the body paint, however, is much deeper than it may seem at first glance. It is much more than a simple declaration of your Oregon Country Fair experience. Rather, it is actually meant to be a metaphor for fertility. When I asked my informant on the meaning behind the painting he revealed that “while it doesn’t mean much to me, to the people who do the paintings, this ritual is a celebration of fertility. [The painters] sometimes get very particular about this and usually will not paint men or young girl’s bodies because, well they cannot [birth a child].” Because of this, the paintings are almost always some type of flower placed in a shape that “look a lot like ovaries.”

This ritual is interesting because it is both not mandatory and seemingly out of place in a summer modern American fair. Fertility rituals often are performed in the spring during religious events, but the Oregon Country Fair is a community run fair taking place in the middle of summer. I believe that this implies that this tradition was not inherent to the fair but rather was brought to it. This notion is reinforced by the fact that the body painting is a part of, but not a central event of the fair. Usually if there was a sort of fertility ritual at a community gathering, it would be integral to the experience, but at the Oregon Country Fair it seems to be a well respected afterthought. Furthermore, at least from what I gathered from my informant, the Oregon Country Fair is in no way advertised of or talked about as a fertility festival.  I think that this shows that at the Oregon Country Fair, people are free to bring and repeat traditions from other cultures even if they do not necessarily have anything to do with the fair itself. If I were to go to the fair, I would assume that this painting is just one example of many such rituals performed at, but not integral to, the Oregon Country Fair.

Babies and the Moon

Nationality: Turkish American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 12, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Turkish

Informant C is 20 year old and studies Journalism. She is half Turkish and speaks Turkish as well. Her mom is Turkish and is from the Eastern Turkey area, about 200 miles west of Syria. Her entire family is scattered over Turkey and have resided in Turkey for many generations. Many of them are involved in agriculture.

People are very mystical about the moon. If there’s like a really really bright moon its considered really good luck especially in the country where you can see the stars and everything. So if the moon outshines the stars that means one of the best things that’s going to happen in your life is going to happen soon. The moon is so mysterious and unknown, and it probably represents something for everyone. So people in Turkey are also really fascinated with babies. And if like a really little baby is born, they’ll like put the baby on the shovel and put it out in the moonlight. And they say like ‘Make my baby stronger’ and it’s like a whole kill the baby or make him stronger. They think that the moon is like curing this baby, it is bizarre. It’s such a strange area. And another thing like if you put the back of a shovel in the moonlight and if it reflects a certain way then you’ll have this many more days of good crop. There’s so many things with the moon. They truly believe it and really do the shovel thing with the children.

 

Analysis: Here informant C tells about some of the rituals that involve the moon in Turkey. She says that the moon is mystical and mysterious and that inspires the large amount of folklore about it, as is also seen in other cultures. Also in Turkey, the people are prized for being strong and independent, which explains why the parents would want their babies to be big and strong, so they put them out under the moon. This is similar in some ways to older customs in Sparta where children were required to prove their strength from a young age.  She also talks about how the moon inspires some agricultural predictions about how the crop will be, since agriculture is so important for this area.

For more about Turkey’s Black Sea region and their folklore, including placing a baby on a shovel, see

Wise, L. (2013, February 23). Folklore and Superstitions of the Black Sea. Retrieved April 30, 2015, from http://www.brighthubeducation.com/social-studies-help/15017-superstitions-and-traditions-in-turkeys-black-sea-region/