Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

A Texan Christmas

Nationality: American-Hispanic
Age: 20
Occupation: Student/Cast Member at Walt Disney World
Residence: San Antonio, Texas
Performance Date: 3/14/2018
Primary Language: English

Informant Info: The informant is a 20-year-old female who was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Her mother is Caucasian, and her father is Hispanic. She currently lives in Orlando, Florida and works for Walt Disney World.

 

Interview Transcript:

Interviewer: Do you have any major holidays that you celebrate? How do you celebrate it?

 

Interviewee: My family has celebrated Christmas the same every year since my brother was born almost 25 years ago. We start Christmas Eve as you would any holiday by prepping “dinner” for around 3 o’clock. We all get in our Sunday best and eat Christmas Eve dinner as a family. After dinner, dessert, and a lot of laughs we sit in the living room reminiscing old Christmas memories. My personal favorite is the one my Grandaddy used to tell about how ecstatic I was to receive a hot wheels toy at a mere 3 years old. After story time we each open a few presents which are the same every year. We start with our matching Christmas jammies and we all change into them immediately. Then my grandma hands us each three boxes. One has pistachios (And uhh..I don’t know the origin of that one). One has a check. And the last has an ornament she found earlier in the year that reminds her of us. After we hang our ornaments on the tree we write our letter to Santa. Each sibling alternates writing it each year and since there’s 4 of us we get a pretty decent break! Last we set out milk and gingerbread cookies for Santa and hang up our stocking, including ones for our fur babies. Then we all go to sleep and wake up not so bright and early Christmas morning!

 

 

Analysis:

Within this one family, there are several interesting pieces of folklore, that I was unfortunately not able to fully get out of the informant. Her family seems to hold on to old traditions and memories, yet the origin is unclear. She says that her family has been doing this for at least 25 years. By the sounds of it, many of the traditions, such as the matching pajamas or the pistachios, fall into the genre of practical jokes. She claims that she loves everything about her Christmas and plans on doing the same thing for her kids, once she has a family of her own. In addition, this tradition seems to share similarities on a macro level, such as a large family dinner on Christmas Eve, writing letters to Santa (a common folk tradition), hanging ornaments, and leaving out milk and cookies.

 

Venezuela: Los Diablos de Yare

Nationality: Venezuela and Miami
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 22 1018
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Informant: Los Diablos de Yare are a religious festival celebrated in Venezuela during Corpus Christi. I remember being introduced to this in school as a child. Every time the festival approached, we would make masks designed to look like devils. Then we would wear the masks and dance around. Even though the masks were designed to look like devils or monsters, they were all extremely colorful. This festivity is a yearly tradition filled with joy, family, and friends. Basically, the whole festivities are made to celebrate good over evil. This is why the masks are made to look like devils and the tradition is considered religious; the whole point is to demonstrate how good will always beat out evil. I don’t remember the origins of it exactly, but I know that it has been a Venezuelan tradition for centuries and that it has obviously evolved over the years. 

Analysis: 

This festival seems to be a very important part of Venezuelan culture. I think the reason why it is so prominent in Venezuela is because its religious. This would explain why schools make a whole celebration out of it and why the tradition has been able to survive for hundreds of years.

I wish the informant would have been able to provide more information as to where and how the tradition originated exactly, but I understand that she has been around it for so long that she just takes it to be a yearly ritual. It’s very intriguing to me that the festival depicts devils in order to celebrate the triumph of good over evil. This demonstrates a very strong imagery that plays with perceptions. It is almost as if the use of devil masks make the devils less intimidating and demonstrate to people that they are stronger than evil. In other words, the creating of this masks can work as a metaphor for taking control over ones own demons. Overall, I really liked this piece of folklore. The vivid colors used for the masks and the dances that happen all around town make it pretty clear that this festival is a time for celebration and family.

Mexico: Day of the Death

Nationality: Mexico City
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 23 2018
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Informant: Día de los Muertos, which translates to Day of the Death, is one of the biggest holidays in all of Mexico. Basically, the holiday is a celebration of the dead so it works as an opportunity for people to pay homage to the ones they have lost. Even though the holiday revolves around dead, it’s very joyous. 

Collector: Are there any special rituals or traditions you do during this time? 

Informant: Oh yeah so many. You need an altar and in the altar you usually put pictures of your loved ones along with some of their favorite foods and items. You then adorn everything with marigold and make a little walkway so that the spirits can find the altar. Supposedly the spirits of the dead come back that night to visit their families, so the marigold leads them to their corresponding altar. The foods and items the family puts up serves as a tribute to the dead and as a gift for when they “visit.” 

Collector: Do you remember how you were introduced to the holiday? 

Informant: Everyone in Mexico celebrates it and they teach it at school so I’ve literally known about it ever since I was born. 

Analysis: 

Day of the Death is an extremely popular and sacred holiday in Mexico. It is interesting to see the recognition it has gotten lately, with movies like Pixar’s Coco. My favorite part about this holiday is that it chooses to embrace death. The holiday literally revolves around the spirits of the death and the afterlife. The fact that death and family are such an integral part of one of the main holidays in Mexico says a lot about Mexican culture. For starters, it demonstrates how family oriented Mexico is. The whole point of Día de los Muertos is that your altar will allow your dead family members to see you again. It also demonstrates Mexicans relationship with death. They’re not necessarily frightened by death, but instead, take it to be a natural part of life and view it as a different cycle.

The use of the marigold is crucial to this holiday and demonstrates how culture heavy Día de los Muertos is. These flowers were sacred to the Aztecs, and are used throughout all of Mexico as an homage to Mexican culture and roots. The fact that they take center stage in one of Mexico’s most important holidays shows just how culturally relevant the marigold is. It is a reminder of Mexico’s past and a flower representative of the country.

I think Día de los Muertos is an amazing holiday that relies heavily on culture and family. I love the approach that the holiday takes towards death and I can understand why this was such a prominent part of the informant’s life; he claims that he has been surrounded by Día de los Muertos festivities ever since he was born. It sounds like a very joyous holiday where one is supposed to celebrate life through death. Even though death is a crucial aspect of this holiday, there is nothing sorrowful or scary about it. Instead, it’s about remembering and maintaining a connection with our loved ones and the people who have passed on.

The Cremer Family’s Passover Hazelnut Game

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Barrington, Illinois
Performance Date: April 16, 2018
Primary Language: English

Background:  I had approached Hannah about telling me about her family Passover tradition that she had fleetingly mentioned at Shabbat Dinner at Hillel at the University of Southern California. She had talked about a hazelnut game for children during Passover that is unique to her family. Hannah goes to her grandparent’s house for the first night of Passover and celebrates the second night at her great-aunts house. She is from Illinois.

Context: I interviewed Hannah in the dining room of our sorority house, Delta Delta Delta. It was right after dinnertime so the dining room was full of people with coffee or tea chatting in the background of our conversation.

“Basically it’s kind of like marbles but we play with hazelnuts and my great-grandfather came up with it. We play with shelled hazelnuts. Everyone sits in a circle and you have your own little pile of hazelnuts which are like the ammo and in the center they spread them out, like a dozen or whatever, and then the kids all go around and take a turn throwing one of their hazelnuts from their personal pile at the ones in the center. If you hit one in the center then you get a quarter. Then as the game progresses there are stacks of quarters with a hazelnut on top that are in the center which are the jackpot pieces. When you hit the hazelnut off the stack of quarters, then you get the hazelnut plus the whole stack. So it’s pretty fun, I don’t know. You play it until you’re at bar or bat mitzvah age and then my grandpa is always the one that runs it all. His grandfather was the one that came up with the game. So we’ve been playing it for a really long time with the exact same hazelnuts. I don’t know how they’ve lasted this long, they’re 60 years old. It’s so gross. I was the only granddaughter until I was 12 so I always got some extra quarters tossed my way. It was always a fun game. When you’re a little kid, the Passover seder is so long to sit through. We would play the game right before dessert. So after the seder and dinner- it was something to look forward to. We always played on the basement floor of my grandparents house. It’s really bizarre. My great grandparents were born in Odessa, Russia. My grandparents were born here. My grandpa learned it from his father. I think it’s important to my grandpa that we keep playing this game. All the hazelnuts are the original hazelnuts, we don’t replace them with any new ones. My dad’s whole side of the family is Eastern-European and came to the US around the early 1900s. I didn’t know that other people didn’t play this game until I was pretty old. I truly had no idea, I thought everyone played this.”

Reflection: I am Jewish and grew up in Los Angeles going to Jewish day school. I have never heard of a tradition like this one, from my friends or family.

The Cremer Family’s Passover Afikomen Tradition

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Barrington, Illinois
Performance Date: April 17, 2018
Primary Language: English

Background: I had approached Hannah about telling me about her family Passover tradition that she had fleetingly mentioned at Shabbat Dinner at Hillel at the University of Southern California. She had talked about a hazelnut game for children during Passover that is unique to her family. Hannah goes to her grandparent’s house for the first night of Passover and celebrates the second night at her great-aunt’s house. She is from Illinois.

Context: I interviewed Hannah in the dining room of our sorority house, Delta Delta Delta. It was right after dinner so the dining room was full of people with coffee or tea chatting in the background of our conversation. After Hannah shared her family tradition of the hazelnut game (published under the title “The Cremer Family’s Passover Hazelnut Game”) I asked her if her family has any other family traditions for Passover. She then shared the tradition of individual afikomen.

“We all have our own afikomen. I don’t know when it… as long as I can remember there is always an afikomen for everyone to find. So like all the grandchildren have their own. Currently there are 9 different afikomen hidden with our names on them. They’re wrapped and we always get a $2 bill. That’s our gift for finding the afikomen. It’s wrapped in a napkin that has your name on it. My grandpa gives us $2 bills as the prize. I’m not sure who started this tradition. I doubt that it comes from my great grandfather. My grandparents hide the afikomen for us to find before we all come to dinner. If you find someone else’s you’re expected to put it back where you found it or pretend like you didn’t see it.”