Category Archives: Life cycle

Armenian Genocide

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“This is the story of my great grandma. At four years old, the Ottoman Empire came bursting into her city, raiding houses and killing anyone who resisted. On a snowy night, she escaped, and would never see the rest of her family again. Trudging through the snow with no shoes, she could see a church steeple. The nuns saw her and invited her in with open arms. At first, they spoke a langauge she did not understand. Eventually, a nun spoke to her in the Armenian language. “We are lucky to have found you. You may stay here as long as you like.” Still too weak to speak, she nodded yes.

They lived together for several years. My great grandma learned she was living in a German convent, and the nun learned that the little girl’s name was Heghine. Every day, Hegine studied reading, writing, and speaking the Armenian language. With the teachers, she learned many wonderful things as she grew up. After years passed, Hegine grew to be a happy, humble, and very smart girl. One day, her favorite teacher came by to sit with her in the rose garden and said “My dear Hegine, the time has come that you continue to a bigger school. There is an Armenian school in the city of Jerusalem. Would you like to go there?”

“I will be a little nervous to go, but I will also be happy. I am very very thankful for this time I have had with you here at the convent.” Just before sunrise, Hegine and her beloved teacher arrived at the train station. They said their goodbyes, and Hegine got on the train. On the train, Hegine sat in a seat by the window, and while the train started moving, she watched the mountains as the sun began to rise.”

Context

“I heard this story from multiple people in my family. In particular, my uncle even made a short story describing her story which gave me a strong sense of what she went through to eventually raise a family that I am part of today. It is very important to my family because her resilience to survive a genocide resulted in my family and I getting to live a fortunate life in the US. Her story is a lesson to us to always be grateful for our opportunities and never give up hope.”

Analysis

This story reveals how family narratives serve as folklore due to their passing through generations. These type of folk stories create cultural identity and connect personal history to larger groups such as the Amerian people. The story demonstrates the value of perseverance and gratitude in everyday life. This survival story connects Amerian identity to family history and maintains the memories of the past. Because of this family lore’s importance in their family, it shapes their collective family identity and becomes a story they all learn and continue to pass it down to future generations. Through the creation of a short story, the varied narratives of the great grandma’s story are reduced and everyone in the family gets the same account, allowing them to all resonate with the same messages.

Ravioli Day

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“My family and I celebrate Ravioli Day every year during early December. It’s a family tradition passed down in our family for more than 100 years now. When it hits Decemeber my mom’s side of the family gathers at my grandparent’s house where we all bring ingredients for ravioli and cook as one family. This past year my family brought the cheese and my personal job was add the filling to the pasta dough that is rolled by my grandma, mom, and aunts. Sometimes when me or my cousins mess up the filling the ravioli explodes and it becomes a funny blame game to guess who did it. Everyone in the family helps whether its making the dough, rolling the dough, making the pasta shapes, making the filling, or making the sauce. Once we finish cooking everything we save it and enjoy it together for Christmas dinner.”

Context

“I never really found out about this tradition besides the fact that I have been doing it since I was a baby. My mom did tell me that it has been in the family for at least a hundred years and even she did not know when it started because she has been doing it since childhood as well. Ravioli day ties to our Italian culture and makes Christmas and the entire month of December unique to my family. I love to see all my relatives during December because they are all scattered throughout the US compared to my grandparents and I who live in California.”

Analysis

Traditions like these represent family customs that act as folklore because they are informally passed down through generations. As in this story, the folk group which is his entire family shares a common cultural identity of being Italian-American. The use of ravioli is a symbol of their ancestry due to the food’s origins and in that sense they are carrying on the legacy of their predecessors who created this tradition. This is called foodways because culture and memory is preserved through the sharing of food. Like him and his mother who learned about this tradition simply by habitually doing the tradition each year since birth, many of us don’t recognize the many things we do daily that are forms of folklore because it is so normal to us. From an outsider perspective, however, this family tradition is unheard of and is specific to their folk group.

Cheese Touch

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“When I was in like elementary school a lot of us would mess around with a game called the cheese touch like if you said cheese touch when you were tagging someone then they would have it. And the only way to prevent it would be to have your fingers crossed. And once you have it you have to give it to someone else or you’re stuck with it. So, I remember we would always have our fingers crossed because anytime was fair game. I remember getting frustrated because kids would lie and say their fingers were crossed when they got tagged. Me and my friends would team up in secret and promise we wouldn’t tag each other if we got the cheese touch. In my senior year of high school, we played senior assassin which gave me flashbacks to the cheesetouch because of the safe rules and the lies that would be created after someone got out. I was completely into both games because they brought out the inner kid in me and my competitive nature.”

Context

I first saw this game when I watched the Diart of a Wimpy Kid movie. I remember being at my friend’s house in his living room watching with my childhood friend group of 4 guys. When we saw the cheese touch scene with thought it was funny but also disgusting because the cheese was rotten. Other kids at our elementary watched the movie too and one of them copied the movie. Since we were immature kids who just wanted to have fun, the mention of the cheese touch got everyone riled up and the game began.

Analysis

The cheese touch game shows the diversity of forms that folklore can come in. It is a variation of another folk belief known as the “cooties” because they both involve infecting others with a negative thing. While it originated in a movie, kids around the US adapted the game into their own and transformed a silly game into a national form of folklore. Folklore is highly prominent in the younger generations because with social media and televesion, kids are prone to copy what they say without questioning its validity. Similar to Alan Dundes’s idea, folklore functions socially within groups that share similiarity giving mutual trust in this scenario. The secret alliances he formed with his friends show the strength of culture through folklore. Regardless of the rules of the game, their tight knit folk group shaped by friendship and a collective interest to not get the cheese touch led to them bending the rules and creating shared identity.

New Month Prosperity

The Story:

“A tradition I grew up seeing was on the first of every month take a handful of cinnamon and blow it out on your doorstep from the palm of your hand. It’s  so  interesting. It was meant for prosperity, to bring prosperity for the new month. I think this is more of a witch spell type thing, I don’t think it’s cautionary really, but it’s just for you to bring abundance and prosperity to your front door, on the first day of the month.”

Reflection:

The informant showed an example of ritual with the historical link to voodoo and magic. The tradition of cinnamon and the first of every month with the blowing action frame this to be a prosperity spell originating from a folk group. Additionally, something I noticed from the information was the acknowledgment of these spells, but they did not participate. It allowed for the informant to talk about how they appeared in their life while also being able to objectively inform me, an outsider, on the origin and the purpose behind these spells. This allowed for a nice insight of folk magic and just how deeply they are rooted within a folk group, even if it is not practiced by every single folk member. In this case, it was not an active ritual, but had enough significance to still be acknowledged by the informant. The timing of this ritual also shows the importance of calendrical rituals in this case and how they can be the backbone behind certain rituals within a folk group. 

Plane Tapping Ritual

Age: 20

Folklore Story:

“Every time I go on a flight  and I fly Southwest mainly every time I go on a flight,  I touch the little heart that’s on the outside of the plane  and I put my palm on it.  And then I as I enter the plane.  I do it as like a good luck thing and I got it from my dad because he would always do it.  He would like put his hand on and he would like pray or like say like a quick prayer.  So I just started doing it too because he would take me on flights  and it was always good. I first saw him do it at like eight because I’ve been going on flights kind of young. I like the idea of like having a child and just like picking up my kids so that they can put their hand on the heart, not the plane.”

Reflection:

The informant’s story is a textbook example of ritual and contagious magic. They describe the desire to touch the heart on the outside of a Southwest plane before boarding. This is a repeated, patterned act performed for good luck. The informant learned from her father, who would pray while touching it, that touching the heart on the plane connects you to the whole. The informant plans to pass this ritual to her own children, showing how rituals reproduce themselves through vertical transmission. This reflects a broader societal reality: despite the advancements of technology and the global dependence on it, people still exhibit small acts of control over the uncontrollable.