Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Lunar Eclipse and a Red Towel

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 26
Performance Date: April 1, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“During a lunar Eclipse, You’re supposed to put a red towel on your belly to protect the baby”

My informant learned this piece of folklore from his parents who were practitioners of this. My informant himself never tried it on his child and never knew why his parents did it. He shared this with me when the topic of pregnancy superstitions came up. This piece of folklore was very interesting to me and made sense because of all the connections that a lunar eclipse has to women, pregnancy and fertility that we learned in class. I also thought it was weird that the superstition says particularly a red towel. This reminded me of Vaz de Silva’s argument that the color red usually symbolizes women and fertility in folklore.

Red Ribbons on Fruit Trees

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 26
Performance Date: April 1, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“My parents used to tie red ribbons on the fruit trees during an eclipse… it was I don’t know…  so that the trees wouldn’t die, supposedly like lunar events like would or an eclipse and stuff would mess with the harvest of that.”

My informant learned this practice from his parents who were practitioners of this themselves. We were discussing the color red and what it had to do with lunar eclipses. There seems to be a connection with lunar eclipses, pregnancy, and fruit. I believe that  fruit may symbolize a women’s fertility and that is why the red ribbon somehow protects the fruit from dying, just as the color red may protect an unborn baby from dying.

Passover

Nationality: Israeli
Age: 18
Performance Date: April 16, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

Okay so the story of Passover is… umm and interesting one. So it goes like this, there’s the jews and they live in Israel and they’re  all under the rule of the Pharaoh and they’re all commanded as slaves to build all the pyramids and they’re like “Na ah we ain’t havin’ that” so one day  Moses says that he’s gonna take his people out of  Egypt if the Pharaoh doesn’t let them free and the Pharaoh says “No you’re not” so he doesn’t, he doesn’t let them free, and Moses takes his, the people, the Jewish people in Egypt and brings them to the … umm… to the sea and then according to the story, the sea splits in half  and they walk through the middle  and then it closes after they’re all through and they escape Egypt and all of the Egyptians chasing them get drowned in the sea so… that’s a pretty not… totally… you know like a folklore story.

Eli learned the story of Passover, a Jewish festival/Holiday at Hebrew school and from his family. Being Jewish, this story is very important to Eli and his family as they had just celebrated Passover. He shared this story with me as we and another friend were talking about the Jewish religion and I asked him to share a piece of folklore with me. I enjoyed hearing him talk about the story of Passover. I was familiar with the story before, but Eli made it sound  more casual, real and humorous.

For other versions of this narrative/ritual, see The Bible (Exodus 12:1-30)

McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 21
Occupation: Production Assistant
Residence: Santa Fe Springs
Performance Date: April 16, 2017
Primary Language: English

So we used to play with McDonald’s toys…HAMBURGLAR FOR YOUR LUIGI! And we used to like categorize them like, animals and… everyone got their own group and we would trade them. It was like picking teams for kickball but with like 70 fucking Mcdonald’s toys.

My informant used to play this childhood game with the toys she would get from the McDonald’s happy meals. She and her cousins would categorize them and trade them similar to pokemon cars, beanie babies etc. This game seemed to be quite important to my informant, talking about this particular game seemed to remind her of her childhood and the fond memories she had back then. I enjoyed listening and participating in this folk game.

Naming Children

Nationality: Gabon
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/25/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandinka

Subject:

West African Rituals Regarding Newborn Children

Informant:

Saran Kaba grew up in Gabon. Her family is mostly from Gabon and Guinea, and strongly identify with Mandingo culture which is prevalent throughout the region. Saran immigrated to the United States in 2014, where she now lives and studies at the University of Southern California.

Original Script:

“Whenever a child is born, we always wait um seven days to name the child and to… yeah to name the child. And um, we shave, like, the complete hair of the child after seven days. Just because, like, we want to remove any kind of, like, bad energy because like, babies are born with hair, so like it’s kind of impurity for us, it’s… a sign of impurity so like by shaving their hair we just remove like any kind of impurity and yeah to make like the child kind of… pure. Umm, and if the born child is like a female, we sacrifice one sheep, and if the child born is a male, we sacrifice two sheeps. I guess just because guys are… more wealthy than girls I don’t know. So that’s something that, like, my mom taught me.”

Informant’s Background Knowledge and Relationship with this Piece:

Saran learned of these rituals from her mom, and also knows that waiting seven days to name the child is based on a Muslim tradition, which she says is prevalent in in her culture. She doesn’t know any more details than that.

Thoughts About the Piece:

This is similar to some European traditions I have heard of, which involve waiting to name a child in case it does not survive early infancy. However, the head shaving is interesting: I know that many mothers I’ve encountered prize their baby’s hair, and I also know that in Jewish tradition, you are not supposed to cut a child’s hair until after their third birthday. Regarding the sacrifices, it seems like the birth of a baby boy is celebrated much more than that of a baby girl, although I don’t know enough about Mandingo culture to say whether that is an artifact of underlying sexism or if there is some other reasoning.