Main Content: My high school, you know… Bell High School we had a tradition we did every year called Powderpuff. Essentially what it was was every year we had a flag football game in which the seniors played against the juniors. What was super funny though was that it was umm reversed. So the girls played the football game and the boys were the cheer leaders. It was like a huge event that we had the week before homecoming. Even during lunch there was… we would have a huge pep rally and both teams would run up onto the stage and everyone would be cheering. Then the guy cheerleader … who buy the way were dressed in cheerleader outfits and had makeup and even wigs. They would have a dance battle. The seniors versus the juniors. Background: Kevin is a 20 year old attending California State University Los Angeles. Both his parents are from El Salvador but he was born and raised in Huntington Park, California. Kevin stated that this powderpuff was an important part of his high school experience. He said that he actually participated and it allowed him to feel and have the perspective of a female cheerleader. Context: Kevin and I were playing video games and when we took a break to eat I asked him if he could help me with my collection of folklore. He agreed and allowed me to record the conversation with the condition that I would not post the video interview. We were both sitting on the couch. My Thoughts: Powderpuff is an example of inversion rituals. In this example the roles of males and females were inverted. I believe that this type of ritual is important especially in defining equality for women. Not only does it show that women can play sports that are deemed to be male only sports, but it also allows men to view sports in the perspective of women.
Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays
Give Us Lord, Our Daily Bread
God is good, God is great, let us thank him for our food, by his hands we all are fed, give us lord our daily bread.
My dad first heard this from my uncle’s wife, and has instilled this into our family gathering meals. This “makes us think about where our food comes from and to be grateful for it. To the sink for until remind us that we have food on our plates and we are able to sustain ourselves based on our fortune. I think it is especially important to note that my dad and uncle adopted this tradition for my aunt’s family, who had been practicing it for many years before. When analyzing each part of this prayer, God is great is acknowledging God’s power. God is good, is supposed to imply that God is looking out for each individual and acts on our behalf, for our own good. Let Us Thank Him, is showing praise and thanks to a higher being for the deeds that have been done in life. For Our Food is quite literal. It refers to the creation of our food throughout the entire process. Whenever we visit everybody in the room and extended family knows this saying. It is important to acknowledge a simple saying, that also rhymes and takes less than a minute to say. It is also a great way to break The ice and pave the way for great conversations.
Tradition of Patterning Chanukah Candles
“So, every night of Chanukah, you put one candle in the menorah for the number of the current night, starting on the right, as well as the shamash, which you light the rest with, from left to right. Everyone does that… But in my family we always tried to do something cool with the candles themselves. My parents always bought those really cheap Chanukah candles from, like, the grocery store or somewhere that come in different colors like blue, white, yellow—I think it’s actually all the colors plus white—so my brother and I would always try to arrange the candles in some sort of pattern every night, So it was aesthetically pleasing, you know? Sometimes the whole menorah would be, like, one color, except the shamash. Or it would alternate colors, purple-orange-purple-orange, (actually, I think there were never green candles, um,…) but, yeah, we took a lot of art classes as kids, and were also both kind of OCD, so I guess that came out… We tried for complimentary colors and things… The challenge was always to plan ahead so that every night could have a perfect design. And we’d make sure that the last night could always be only blue and white—the Jewish colors. I dunno, it was just a kind of way to make it more interesting, the tradition, that is.”
I decided it would be interesting to see if I could collect religious folklore from someone not particularly religious, so this tradition/ritual comes from teenaged girl, who is ethnically Jewish, but neither practicing nor bat mitzvahed. I simply asked her to explain different components of how she celebrates Chanukah. This specific ritual practice puts a personal, non-institutional twist on something essential to the celebration of the holiday, the lighting of the menorah, which is mandated by the religion. It is way of inserting personal significance—in this case, a love of patterns, creativity, and mathematics—into a traditional ritual which would otherwise hold little meaning for my informant.
The Traditional Chanukah Game of Dreidel – Onion Modification
INFORMANT: “So, dreidel is like the game you play at Chanukah, where you spin the dreidel—it’s like a four-sided top—and bet gelt [chocolate coins] and the different sides do different things. Do I need to, like, explain all of those?”
COLLECTOR: “No, you can skip to the story. People can look that up.”
I: “Okay, sure. So it was, um, six? No, like, a lot of years ago. We were having a Chanukah party with a bunch of not-Jewish friends, and had lit the menorah and were playing dreidel, and my brother’s best friend sucked at it. I mean, it’s a lot of luck, but he lost like all his gelt in like two rounds, but he wanted to keep playing with the rest of us, so we had an onion in the middle of the counter, leftover from making latkes, and he asked if he could bet that to get back in. And we were all like, “sure, whatever,” because we felt bad for him having to sit there. And anyways, he bet this onion to get back in and ended up winning the game. So, as a victory—like to celebrate—he decided to eat the onion, to… honor it or whatever. He’s really weird. And, he takes a huge bite out of this onion, like an apple, and just can’t stop crying for twenty minutes. But now, because of this, every Chanukah when we play dreidel, whoever wins has to take a bite of an onion before they can eat their gelt, to like even it out.”
I decided it would be interesting to see if I could collect religious folklore from someone not particularly religious, so this tradition/ritual comes from teenaged girl, who is ethnically Jewish, but neither practicing nor bat mitzvahed. I simply asked her to explain different components of how she celebrates Chanukah. This specific ritual practice puts a personal, non-institutional twist on something essential to the celebration of the holiday, the game of dreidel, which although is not mandated by the religion, is quite widespread amongst Jews. The onion is way of inserting personal significance, into a traditional ritual which would otherwise hold little meaning for my informant. It is also a way to remember a story—which happened so long ago in her childhood that the details are surely blurred—that has become almost a family legend.
Latkes
COLLECTOR: “Do you know how to make latkes?”
INFORMANT: “I mean, it’s like really easy.”
C: “So, how do you do it?”
I: “You just take a bunch of potatoes and an onion—or three or four if you’re my dad—and put them through the spinny grater thing in a Cuisinart. And then you can wring it out with a towel, and mix it with flour, and salt, and an egg, and I think sometimes baking powder. And then make… patties… and you fry them. In like a bit of oil—not too much.”
C: “How long do you cook them for?”
I: “Just, like don’t burn them. I mean, I like mine kinda crispy. And raw potato is disgusting. Don’t try it.”
C: “And do you just eat them plain?”
I: “Yes… I do. Remember to put them on a paper towel to soak up the oil, first. And most people like applesauce or sour cream or other weird stuff on them, but why?… I’m a potato purist.”
I decided it would be interesting to see if I could collect religious folklore from someone not particularly religious, so this recipe comes from teenaged girl, who is ethnically Jewish, but neither practicing nor bat mitzvahed. I simply asked her to explain different components of how she celebrates Chanukah. The cooking of latkes has become so ingrained in her as part of the Chanukah tradition that, from her nonchalant description, it seems an almost thoughtless process, now. The folkloric quality of this traditional recipe is clear, though the lack of any measurements, heats, times, or anything quantifiable in the instructions; a major part of being able to cook them properly is intuition gained from seeing and helping others cook them over and over again.