Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Festival of São António

Age: 20

Date of Performance: 4/24/2025

Language: English

Nationality: Portuguese

Occupation: Student

Primary Language: English

Residence: United States

  1. Text

The informant is a college student. She referenced a festival honoring the Saint of Lisbon in Portugal, where she grew up. Her family used to celebrate the festival with little parties and elaborate decorations to honor their Portuguese nationality.

2. Context

“You celebrate with little parties and you decorate with a specific flower called manjericão. And you dress traditionally and do a Portuguese dance with flower arches.”

“I’ve been doing it since I gained consciousness. I liked it when we did it at school. They would make us learn the dance with a boy and you got to do it with him for all the parents.”

“I would be like ‘ooooo who’s my partner going to be this year.’ But in the street you have to be part of like a neighborhood group to be in the real parade.”

“But the little parties are for everyone and each neighborhood sets one up. Just like beer and food trucks and live music.”

“Some people call the whole thing ‘santos populares’ because sometimes there is more than one saint.”

3. Analysis

This is a festival that honors the informant’s nationality and provides an opportunity to celebrate with friends and family and engage in patriotism through folklore. It engages tradition and a variety of folkloric practices to honor Portuguese saints and build city pride. It is folklore in that it is artistic communication in the broader community and none of the festival practices have authored ownership.

Eat Long Noodles on Your Birthday for a Long Life

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chino, California
Language: English

1. TEXT/TRANSCRIPTION
On my birthday, my parents always made me eat noodles. It didn’t matter what else we were having, there had to be noodles. They’d say, “You need to eat long noodles so you’ll have a long life.” It was non-negotiable. Even if I didn’t feel like it, they’d put a plate in front of me and tell me to just eat at least one bite for good luck.

Technically, in Filipino tradition, you’re supposed to eat pancit, which is this stir-fried noodle dish with vegetables and meat. It’s super common at birthdays, parties, or any kind of celebration. But in my house, we never really had pancit, we always had spaghetti instead. Filipino-style spaghetti, with sweet sauce and hot dogs in it. It’s kind of a thing in the Philippines, especially at kids’ birthday parties. So for me, the tradition kind of morphed into eating long spaghetti noodles instead of pancit, but the meaning was still the same.

I remember one year I asked, “Can I just skip the noodles this time?” and my parents were like, “No, do you want to shorten your life?” They weren’t completely serious, but also… kind of serious. It became this lighthearted ritual, but with a deep undertone: you do it because you respect the meaning behind it, even if it’s just a couple of bites.

2. CONTEXT 
This is something I’ve heard my whole life from my Filipino family. My parents grew up with it, my aunts and uncles too. It’s one of those traditions that gets passed down without anyone sitting you down to explain it, you just know. The idea is that the length of the noodle symbolizes the length of your life, so you shouldn’t break or cut it when you eat it. And it’s not just limited to birthdays either, it shows up at other celebrations too, but birthdays are the main one where it really matters.

Even though I grew up in the U.S., my family still brought this tradition with them. We didn’t always follow every single Filipino custom, but this one stuck. What’s interesting is how we adapted it, like replacing pancit with spaghetti, especially when I was a kid and probably pickier about food. But the core idea stayed intact, and that made it feel both traditional and personal.

3. INTERPRETATION
This superstition is rooted in a common cultural motif found in many Asian cultures: the idea that long noodles = long life. In Filipino culture, especially influenced by Chinese heritage and local folk beliefs, pancit has come to represent prosperity, health, and longevity. The ritual of eating noodles on your birthday is a symbolic act, one that links the celebrant’s life to continuity, abundance, and family tradition.

By emphasizing that the noodles should be uncut or unbroken, the tradition reinforces the value of uninterrupted life and good fortune. It also reflects a worldview where small everyday actions hold spiritual or symbolic weight, what you do with your food matters, especially during life’s milestones. In this way, eating noodles isn’t just a meal; it’s a performative wish for the future.

The adaptation from pancit to spaghetti shows how traditions evolve when cultures blend or when diasporic families make substitutions that fit their environment or tastes. Filipino-style spaghetti, which is distinctly sweeter than Western versions and a staple at birthday parties, becomes not just a workaround but a cultural hybrid, reinforcing Filipino identity in a uniquely modern way. It speaks to how immigrants and their children navigate honoring heritage while also reshaping it.

Overall, this superstition isn’t about fear, it’s about hope, continuity, and connection. It turns a birthday into a spiritual renewal and brings generations together through a shared plate of noodles, whether traditional or not.

Mardi Gras

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Full-Time College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

I interviewed MW who is from New Orleans. Although born in Ohio, his family moved to New Orleans when he was 4 years old. This means that he was raised there.

M talked to me about his experience with Mardi Gras and growing up in New Orleans. Every year, his family makes a big deal about going to Mardi Gras. They plan weeks ahead by buying beads and decorations for themselves. He explains that his family primarily focuses on getting green and purple beads as that’s what his dad did for his first Mardi Gras. They don’t do elaborate costumes but do have a spot that they like to go to. This year he took his girlfriend, and his parents allowed him to go out by himself instead of staying with them.

His family seems to have a routine. They focus on the beads and not the costume portion of Mardi Gras. I think this is important to note as they have personalized Mardi Gras in a way that doesn’t prioritize what they wear. It’s also important to note that they seem to have a sacred spot where their family continuously goes. This is an example of tradition in their family. His girlfriend going also peeked my interest because when I asked him about being alone in previous years he said this is his first Mardi Gras without staying with his family. I think this symbolizes a coming of age, where now that he has a girlfriend and is more independent, his parents are allowing him to go out and explore on his own. This public ritual holds such a personalized meaning, and I’m sure it’s the same for all the families that participate in Mardi Gras.

Christmas Tree on Halloween

Nationality: Mexican/American
Age: 18
Occupation: Full-Time College Student
Residence: Berkeley, CA
Language: English

I interviewed SH and she told me about putting up the Christmas Tree on Halloween.

My family doesn’t celebrate halloween. It is seen as a pagan holiday, and coming from a Christian household, it is a taboo, but more specifically deemed satanic. This created a period of time where my classmates would be engrossed in the spirit of halloween, and I would be left out. In order to substitute this time period, on halloween every year, my family put up the Christmas tree. It was a time of bonding within my family and was very common amongst our Christian community. Our community would host events on this day since the kids of the community wouldn’t be allowed to go trick-or-treat. We would invite our friends and family to commemorate the coming of Christmas.

The taboo with halloween is a description of a folk belief. The switching of a dark holiday in this household inverses to the lightheartedness of putting up the Christmas tree. This change in ritual replaces the seemingly pagan holiday with a more Christian one. The church uses this time period for communal bonding and resistance to mainstream practices.

Folk Ritual: Funeral Custom – Saranta

  1. Text: It is custom in the culture of Greek people to practice an extended window of mourning after a loved one dies. This window lasts 40 days and is called Saranta. It is the belief of the Greek people that during this window of time, the soul continues to stay within the earth and navigate within it. It has not passed on to heaven, but remains wandering for a period of time in order to complete and review lingering tasks from its time in life. This concept has been colloquially believed in by Greek people for centuries. It is at the basis of their concept of mourning, becoming something almost as equally important as the very funeral service itself. By participating in a continued mourning during this time, the family becomes adjacent to the spirit of their loved one as it exists around them.
  2. Informants Context: The Saranta is very important in our culture. For 40 days after the death, we continue to mourn. This is because we believe that the spirit continues to walk the earth for 40 days after passing. After my husbands death, I wore black for 40 days. This was to recognize and signal my own mourning. For the first three days after the death, they say the spirit remains near where they lived. I believe this – I felt him around the house, I heard him around where his bed was. After that, its said that they begin to explore the world, go back to places where they used to spend lots of time. Maybe he went back to Greece for a few days, I don’t know. But then in the final few weeks, he has to be with God, or so they say. Then on the 40th day, he gets to be free. He goes to heaven. We do little things in that time so to watch over him as he wanders. Mirrors are covered during the 40 days, my grandmother used to say that souls get trapped in the glass if they go into it. During the funeral, we make sure a small window is open in case his spirit wants to leave, to wander. Other little things are part of the 40 days. For example, very little cleaning and no renovation to the house after the death so not to disturb the soul if it wants to visit. The most important thing is that we light the Kantili (oil lamp) everyday to assure that he is guided back to us when he wants to visit. If the candle burns, it will also in part assure that his spirit will be eternal. These rituals were passed down to us by our families when we used to still live in Greece. They showed us how to practice these things when there were deaths in the community. I was there during the second world war when I was very young, and then during the civil war. So even though I left at an early age, we attended many funerals before I officially departed from the country.
  3. Collectors Interpretation: Both the 40 day period and the superstitious rituals that occur during this period reflect certain distinct values on the part of the Greeks. Firstly, these superstitions clearly reflect a value for the concept of the eternal. Specifically as it applies to the burning light, Greeks want to assure that the spirit remains forever in existence despite bodily death. This is consistent with the superstitious fear of windows as well. Juxtaposing the hope for eternal paradise is the fear of eternal purgatory that could arise from getting trapped in these reflective surfaces. The Greek concept of 40 days of mourning clearly evolves into a folkloric concept in and of itself, as it is born out of and coupled with many of the superstitious concepts surrounding it.

Fields

AGE: 85

Date_of_performance: May 5, 2025

Informant Name: Confidential (EZ)

Language: Greek/English

Nationality: Greek/Canadian

Occupation: Retired

Primary Language: Greek

Residence: Canada