Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Christmas Crowns, Cracker Jokes, and “Reindeer Poop”

Word of Mouth From my Mother

If you didn’t notice son, Christmas is a carefully choreographed tradition–I like to think of it as a mix of cozy ritual, a bit of British custom, and some parental magic. Every year, we manage to host your aunts, uncles, grandparents, and family friends under one roof, crowding them around a long dinner table for a meal that never changes: your father’s signature roast, buttery potatoes, and whatever else[she talked about as these dishes seeming to appear out of nowhere but feeling like they’ve always belonged]…

…You remember the main custom, before the meal begins, we all pop Christmas crackers, wear the paper crowns, and tell the corny jokes or trivia questions. Everyone has to wear their crown, no exceptions. [Something of a silent rule.] Inevitably, [Uncle name] brings the energy to the meal as he tries to guess the answer to someone else’s riddle before they finish reading it. It’s chaotic, silly, and comforting–exactly how it’s supposed to be…

…Remember on Christmas eve, we’d leave out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk for Santa, and you and your sister would go to bed, your father and I would leave out a few wrinkled dates in the front yard as “reindeer poop.” We’d also make sure that before Every Christmas morning, no matter how old you two[me and my sister] got, the milk would be half-drunk, the cookies nibbled, and the dates scattered. Even now, when you all know the “truth,” we still put the plate and dates out. It’s tradition…

Context

I interviewed my mom about our family’s Christmas rituals, and she lit up almost immediately. “It’s the one time of year when everyone is just… there,” she said. For her, Christmas was always about creating a sense of continuity–blending traditions from her own childhood with the new ones she and my dad created when we were young. The paper crowns and Christmas crackers come from my dad’s British side of the family, and they’ve been part of every holiday she can remember. “You can’t not wear the crown. It’s just part of the meal,” she joked.

She described how she and my dad would take turns arranging the Santa plate late at night–taking a careful bite of the cookies, sipping the milk just right, and tossing a few dates in the yard to complete the illusion.

These rituals weren’t grand or showy, but they were performed with deep consistency. Even now, with the kids grown, my parents still go through the motions–not because we believe, but because we remember.

Analysis

This Christmas tradition is an excellent example of domestic folklore: habitual, symbolic acts carried out within the family to affirm identity, belonging, and memory. While none of the individual actions–crackers, roast, Santa plates–are unique on their own, the specific combination of these elements, repeated year after year, becomes a form of narrative performance that binds the family together.

The Christmas crackers and paper crowns reflect a cultural carryover from British holiday customs, adapted into the family’s American context. They serve as both props and prompts–each one delivering not just a joke but a shared experience. The insistence on everyone wearing the crowns transforms a simple object into a badge of belonging, and the ritualized groaning at jokes adds a performative dimension to the meal.

The Santa cookies and “reindeer poop” represent another key aspect of holiday folklore: magical realism within childhood belief systems. These actions deliberately blur the line between fiction and reality, giving children something to believe in while also offering parents a way to perform care and wonder. Even as belief fades, the actions remain–now functioning not as proof of Santa, but as proof of love and continuity.

In this sense, the tradition has matured alongside the family: once a tool of imagination, it now functions as a nostalgic ritual that reaffirms connection across time. The ongoing performance of the Santa plate–even when no one is fooled–embodies the essence of folklore: shared meaning enacted again and again, not because we need to believe, but because we want to remember. It’s part of the ties that bind our family together and I will definitely continue this tradition–if not add onto it–with my own kids when the time comes.

Día de Los Reyes Magos (Three Kings Day)

Transcript of Interview with my Informant:

Each year on January 6th, my family celebrates Día de Los Reyes Magos, or Three Kings Day, a tradition with roots in Catholic faith and Hispanic culture. The story goes that Melchor, Gaspar, and Balthasar–guided by the star of Bethlehem–brought gifts to the newborn Jesus. In honor of this event, our family gathers at someone’s home (sometimes mine) and shares a special sweet bread called Rosca de Reyes. The bread is circular, topped with colorful dried fruit, and contains hidden figurines of baby Jesus inside.

During the celebration, each family cuts a slice of the Rosca. If someone finds a figurine inside their piece, they’re “chosen” to host a gathering later in the year–symbolizing both a blessing and a responsibility. It’s a mix of excitement and groaning laughter when someone finds one; some are honored, others jokingly curse their luck.

On the night before, January 5th, children place a shoe near the door or under the Christmas tree, awaiting small gifts from the Three Kings by morning–just as kids do with Santa Claus on Christmas. While we’ve adapted parts of the tradition for our life in the U.S., the essence remains: a celebration of faith, family, and culture that marks both the joy of giving and the hope of a new year.

Context:

My informant first became aware of the significance of Día de Los Reyes Magos as a child, but admitted they didn’t initially recognize it as a distinct or formal “tradition.” Growing up in a Hispanic family in the U.S., the celebration felt like an extension of everyday life–something “normal,” even if classmates or neighbors didn’t understand it. The ritual of gathering around the Rosca and the playful suspense of finding the baby Jesus figurine stood out as moments of connection and community.

Celebrations would rotate between family members’ homes, often becoming larger events when someone “won” the figurine. These gatherings served not just as cultural practice, but also as a form of reunion–bringing relatives together after the holidays for one more festive moment. The act of putting out a shoe for gifts was a quiet, joyful echo of Christmas traditions, but with its own spiritual undertone tied to the biblical Magi.

The informant noted that these rituals, though modest in scale compared to holidays like Christmas, carry a different kind of emotional weight. They blend the sacred with the familial, and even the humorous–like the yearly joking dread of having to host the next party. Though they didn’t see their upbringing as “filled with traditions” at first, reflecting on this holiday made them realize how layered and meaningful these recurring events are.

Analysis:

The Día de Los Reyes Magos tradition functions as a cultural bridge, connecting the informant’s Hispanic heritage with their life in the United States. Like many diasporic traditions, it has been adapted to new social contexts–reshaped by work schedules, school calendars, and community life–yet remains firmly rooted in Catholic ritual and familial bonds.

The act of sharing the Rosca de Reyes and discovering the baby figurine exemplifies how folklore can use food as both a symbolic and functional tool. The bread becomes more than a treat–it’s a ritual object, one that assigns roles (the future host), invites storytelling, and reinforces familial obligations through humor and fate. In this way, the tradition embodies both luck and labor: blessings that come with responsibilities, just as faith comes with commitment.

Furthermore, the informant’s reflection illustrates the invisible ubiquity of folk practices–how traditions can be so woven into daily life that their significance is only recognized when viewed from outside or upon reflection. The use of shoes to receive gifts also echoes other folk traditions (like Dutch Sinterklaas or Saint Nicholas Day), showing the shared human impulse to mythologize generosity and moral reward during midwinter festivals.

Ultimately, this tradition is not just about religious observance. It is about identity–how faith, food, family, and folklore sustain cultural memory and offer moments of grounding and joy in the midst of American life. It’s a celebration not just of the Three Kings, but of the endurance of heritage in a changing world.

Gacha Gaming Luck Rituals

The Informant

CM is a long-time gacha player who players multiple different gacha games and stays up to date in the community news of gacha games he doesn’t even play. The informant admits to doing one of the following rituals in the past, having played the game genre since he was 13.

The Text

“Gacha” games are a from of video games that involve a “gacha” element, deriving from the Japanese toy-capsule vending machines of gachapon, in which rewards are drawn through lottery as a monetization system. As a very luck-based system, it lends itself to superstitions and magical rituals, particularly when players are investing their in-game resources into “pulling” for gacha. Most gacha games tend to sell particularly desireable limited characters or equipment, and the lottery mechanic incentivizes players to quite literally perform summoning rituals to “pull” the right character or equipment.

According to the informant, there are two big ways to perform a luck ritual in gacha community. In the past, one method was to change your social media profile picture (Discord, X, etc.) to the target character before you pulled for them. Other people draw summoning circles, placing the phone in the middle of the diagram with merch on the periphery. Some people would assemble entire shrines in dedication of the target character before they roll. The informant recalls an episode where a particular player put their phone into a circle of salt to keep away bad luck before rolling.

In Grand Blue Fantasy, a particular gacha game, the most incentivized way to pull would be to pull 300 pulls at once for an incentivized reward, and you must play a song, like related to the target character, on loop as the game rolls through the 300 pulls. If the player ever repeats a song used for a previous character, the rolls would be atrocious, from an anecdote. The informant also recounts a method where the player would go to a specific location important to the target character or have related characters active in the party while pulling for the character.

Analysis

What I find most interesting about this ritual is the homeopathic nature of summoning for a fictional character, as described by Frazer’s sympathetic magic, despite the target of the homeopathic connection being completely fictional. This operates off the belief that the target character will be bound to other characters, locations, and merchandise that have a connection to them. Setting one’s public profile picture also morphs the player’s cyborg identity to be closer to that of the character, again evoking a homeopathic bond. Because the user’s are invested in the characters and want them to “come home” to their account, they will perform rituals to improve their odds, especially as losing to the lottery odds can be quite costly to an account, forcing the player to either pay for more rolls or miss out on the character. As many gacha games sell their characters through story, the narratives the players experienced with the target character also incentivizes their investment on pulling for the target character, going as far as to perform rituals to better their luck when rolling.

Induction Pranks of Passage TTRPGs

The Informant

GL is a long time tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) player with years of experience as a Game Master (a special role in TTRPGs). When I first asked about Induction Pranks in TTRPGs, GL had some time to discuss with some other members of the community before our interview.

The Text

The informant reports a few different induction pranks and common shared experiences that qualifies someone as a member of the TTRPG community, distinctly differentiating two sets between GMs and players. For Game Masters, the common experience is dealing with the first problem player, a whole subset of narrative genres emerging from this experience can be found on the subreddit r/RPGHorrorStories. The informant cites chaotic and evil player characters, which is a distinct tradition of D&D alignment stemming from Original Dungeons and Dragons. When he exchanges stories with other GMs, while telling success stories can be fun, tales of how terrible a particular player was to work with is an effective way of relating to each other. For players, while the informant reports that the community is generally averse to gatekeeping in recent years due to the nerdy and niche reputation and history the game has, he recounts how older players in the OSR community will put new players through the “death funnel,” a meat grinder dungeon that will kill several player characters to get the player accustommed to the brutal game style of older games. We discussed how this reflects a cultural shift in the TTRPG landscape in the modern age where players become more attached to their characters and think of themselves as the hero of the story whereas older D&D is more about the dungeon crawl, with any given character not expected to live through the story.

We then talked about unique signifers of the TTRPG player identity, such as maps and miniatures, which led to our discussion of how conversely, despite being a “tabletop” game, most TTRPGs can be played without a map or grid or any miniatures at all with the “theater of mind,” which we agreed was very unique to TTRPGs as wargames tend to rely on a grid or map and the miniature sets. Extending from that, we discussed how owning a set of dice can identify a TTRPG player, particular the 20-sided dice, which is hardly ever used for any other game and iconic to D&D. If someone owns a cohesive themed set of dice from 4-sided to 6, 8, 10, 12, and 20, then that is a sure certain sign of a TTRPG player. In a way, the moment a player buys their own set of dice instead of borrowing someone else’s indicates a commitment and thus induction to the community. The other example he talked about was creating one’s own first character, which players nowadays are more likely to be attached to as mentioned earlier. Even though the character may never be played in an actual game, a TTRPG player can likely be identified by their excitement to share their character ideas, character sheet build, or even stories involving that character from a game.

Analysis

This was a particularly interview as the informant came prepared, giving a blason populaire about his own ingroup of fellow GMs and particularly problematic players who play chaotic and evil characters, citing a specific experience that identifies a particular community. Older players also have an “induction prank” for newer players when playing older systems to shatter their idea of TTRPGs before welcoming them to the experience, but it’s also interesting to note that this hobby doesn’t try to gatekeep newcomers with anything that could be qualified as hazing. Aside from the “death funnel” and Gary Gygax’s Tomb of Annihilation dungeon designed to kill player characters, we both thought of a particular video as an another example of this “induction prank” in D&D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBmNThMZJ1U

“Off record,” he joked that the real hazing is letting new players play 5th edition (a particularly divisve version of the game he dislikes but is otherwise a popular gateway game), but he notes that many other players in the community would disagree with the sentiment of the joke. Noting the uniqueness of TTRPG dice sets, a rite of passage presents itself in the form of buying the first set of dice, an example of Stuart Hall’s reception with the expression of community membership identity performance via consumerism. We laughed about how cheap it is to actually buy a dice set (you can get like a pack of 10 sets of 5 dollars), but at the same time, nobody else would bother with buying such a set of dice.

Less materialistic indications of membership are player characters, where a newcomer exploring the hobby might borrow a prebuilt character while TTRPG players committed to the hobby will not only have the knowledge to build their own characters but be actively invested in them as a proxy of themselves that they would like to roleplay as. In a sense, this is akin to a fantastical identity localized within this particular hobby or at a particular table, and modern players who focus more on the epic narrative of a band of heroes on an adventure invested in the safety and prosperity of their characters as an extension of the performed identity of the self. This is comparable to the process of an initiation ritual for community membership.

Jiggalo – Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Language: English

Ritual Dance: Jiggalo

Context: “Jiggalo is a dance I did with my high school volleyball team before every single match we played. It’s to kind of get the team hyped up and energetic for the game at the end of our warm-up. It also brings the team together as a sort of bonding thing. It starts with everyone separating off into grade levels, so the freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors all go off with their grade and get a few minutes to coordinate a dance. Once everyone is ready, we come back in a circle and sing ‘Our hands are high, our feet are low, and this is how we jiggalo,’ and then one at a time, each group does their little dance.

I first learned it in my freshman year at our first home game of the year, when the team captain said ‘Alright let’s go do jiggalo’ after we warmed up. The girls who had been there the year before taught me how to do it, but because I was the only freshman on the team, I had to do the actual dance alone which was kinda fun. They’re also the ones who told me that if we don’t do it, it’s basically an automatic loss, so the tradition was very important.”

Analysis: Not many people think about sports teams as folk groups, but they can definitely be considered as such. The main focus of sports is the athletic competition, and it’s clear why, but the communal aspect of it is often overlooked as a result. The entire world of sports is home to countless rituals that are only understood by the participants and/or fans of a select sport, and my informant’s description of jiggalo illustrates this perfectly. When she first said the word, my knee-jerk reaction was “what the hell is a jiggalo?” but that just proves my point. To me, it’s just a silly sounding word that could mean anything. To my informant and her team, it’s a sacred pre-game ritual that is important enough to where if they don’t do it, it immediately condemns the entire game. A common thread in folklore is the lack of understanding by outsiders, and while this pre-game ritual may not fit the traditional ideas of folklore, I believe it absolutely fits under the umbrella.