Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Eating In Chinese Restaurant on Christmas

Nationality: American
Age: 55
Occupation: Musician/ Web Producer
Residence: New York City, NY
Performance Date: April 20
Primary Language: English

“Ok… the tradition is every umm year for Christmas Eve or ummm Christmas Day we are Jewish, we do in fact go to a Chinese restaurant to eat ummm dinner and it’s a very silly thing. and we do it because we heard about the tradition and it’s a very… you know… as somebody who’s Jewish, you do feel a little out of place during Christmas because it’s all consuming everywhere in society and so it’s kind of like a funny thing that’s become a tradition of actually participating in your own way christmas which is if you’re Jewish you go to a Chinese restaurant so… it’s…that’s… it’s funny it’s almost like a counter tradition or a part of the tradition of Christmas that a Jewish person would eat in a Chinese restaurant”

That’s interesting about this tradition is that it isn’t really traditional to Jewish culture, it’s a very new thing for Jewish people to celebrate christmas in this way. It’s a way to feel included within Christmas. The informant seems to have gotten the tradition from his peers. He is from New York City which does have a high population of Jewish people. The fact that New York City has this high population of Jewish people seems to permeate the culture of his current residency.

Annapolis Tug of War

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 24
Primary Language: English

“So in my ummm… hometown… ummm… my parents live in Annapolis… and in Annapolis there’s a divide between two smaller little… like… sub cities. There’s downtown Annapolis and Eastport and what’s dividing them is the chesspeak bay and theres the… there’s the bridge. an unnamed bridge that connects the two. and so ummm… each year the city of Annapolis puts on this ummm… tug of war that goes along the chesspeak bay. So they get this massive rope that’s at least a mile long and they get citizens of Annapolis to tug from Annapolis and citizens of Eastport to tug from Eastport and so… it’s usually twenty people on each side of the rope and it’s going across the entire bay and they have like boats like it’s just a rope across the entire bay for like one mile which was super cool to see every year and I participated in it on my ummm… last year and Eastport did win last year, that’s where my family lives and it’s a super cool tradition”

This tradition seems to span an two entire boroughs of a town and seems to focus on conflict between the boroughs of Annapolis. The rivalry doesn’t seem too bitter though as the towns to dedicate this one tug of way every year to this friendly rivalry.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 20
Primary Language: English

“Every year in D.C… Washington D.C., there’s what’s called a Cherry Blossom Festival. And ummm… it’s in the spring and it… happens each year when all of the cherry blossom trees… blossom… I guess…ummm… and… it’s super cool because everything is that bright washed out shade of pink and there are pedals everywhere especially after the festival is over and like the trees like… and the pedals have fallen everywhere because of the wind. I used to think it was super cool when I was like eight, but now I just think it’s kind of a nuisance because it happens every year but it creates a ton of traffic and I can’t get where I need to go… And it happens in D.C. and like in Annapolis there’s like… that’s like an hour’s distance and there’s still traffic so it is a gridlock nightmare but it’s still a super cool part of D.C. that not a lot of people that… don’t spend a lot of time in D.C. realize. So it’s a fun tradition”

This one is a modern festival based on a natural phenomenon. We don’t usually have that many new festivals based on these phenomenons in modern day. We don’t celebrate the winter solstice or anything really but this seems to be a festival representational off of a new age of spring and the aesthetic beauty of the cherry blossoms of Washington D.C.

Cinnabons at Macalaster

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Paul, MN
Performance Date: 3/17/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

Informant Description/ Context of performance: Over our spring break, one of my friends told me about a tradition they hold in a music group she’s part of at school. The music group is called AME, which stands for African Music Ensemble. They have concerts a couple times throughout the semester, and after each concert there is an after party filled with various drinking games and traditions. The professor who runs the group is called Sowah.

Original Script:

Interviewee: In Ensemble during our after parties we make Cinnabons… while we are hammered out of our minds. And ALL the people who take singing lessons with Sowah sing a song that has a word in it that sounds like “Cinnabon” and then we feed pieces of the Cinnabons to everyone. But the rule is that you can’t feed yourself, you MUST feed someone else a piece.

Me: Do you know when that tradition started? Or like how it started?

Interviewee: It was started by this person named Natalie like 6 or 7 years ago, and people enjoyed it so we just kept it going. I’m not 100% sure as to like why it started though.

Me: Got it, did she just randomly make it up or was there some reasoning behind it?

Interviewee: Yeah okay so the reason it was Cinnabons was because the song has a word in it that sounds similar to Cinnabon, like if a person who doesn’t know anything about AME or any of the African songs at all and head this song, they’d be like “why are they talking about Cinnabons?” And then at the very end of the song, we go MMMMMMmmmmmm. So it’s like MMmmm its so yummy at the Cinnabons.

Conclusion: One thing I’m always curious about is how these traditions came about. How did someone just decide to set these rules that would soon to go on to become tradition for many years to come? There was no clear answer in this case, but it was interesting to observe a culture like a music group in a small liberal arts school in Minnesota.

 

Parada Del Sol, Western Heritage Parade

Nationality: American
Age: 47
Occupation: RBC Branch Manager
Residence: Phoenix, Arizona
Performance Date: April 15, 2017
Primary Language: English

The Parada Del Sol is an annual parade in Scottsdale, Arizona. My father is an active, yearly participant since he was very young.

Me: What is the Parada Del Sol?

TC: The Parada Del Sol, has been around for a very long time and it’s the larget horse drawn parade in the country. And it’s also, when I was a kid, the parade coincided with the parade del sol rodeo, so the parade was on Saturday and the rodeo is the Saturday and Sunday. It’s in the springtime and runs through Old Towne Scottsdale. Different equeestrain groups from around Arizona, different government  figures, and civic groups like Native American groups and the Sherrif’s posse and the Scottsdale charros and girl scout groups all walk or ride in the parade. The streets are lined with spectators and it’s an all day affair.

Me: What is the purpose of the parade?
The purpose is to maintain the western heritage of Scottsdale. We are the west’s most western city and have a lot of pride in our western heritage. It’s a combination of our cowboy history, Native American history and Mexican history that makes up the culture of our state and we are celebrating that to remind people of the greatness of our state and to let the kids know where they are living and the history and culture that is found here in Arizona and especially Scottsdale.

Me: Who chooses the parade participants?

TC: A non-profit group has run the parade since the beginning. A committee that runs the parade chooses the participants, it’s a non-government group. It’s a lot of same groups every year with new members, but there is a lot of new groups that pop up.

Analysis:

Festivals and parades are great ways to express identity, whether of a nation or town. They bring together elements they deem important to their identity and display and perform that for everyone to see. The participants are either performing some aspect of their identity or the spectators are watching and passively participating. This festival is expressing the western identity of Scottsdale, Arizona and of Arizona in general by parading members of the community from all walks of life that express western culture. Whether that be an Apache group in traditional dress or the Sherif’s Posse in traditional cowboy dress on horseback. They are expressing and celebrating what they believe is their western culture. People of all backgrounds attend and participate, therefore it is an inclusive celebrating that projects a sense of community around the shared past of the state. It’s put on by a cultural group and participated in by the general public. The parade occurs in the spring when it is starting to warm up again, the name Parada Del Sol in Spanish means parade of the sun, Scottsdale, Arizona is known for its heat and it is something that all Arizonans know and consider part of their identity, that is this shared experience of the extreme heat. Therefore the sun is an important part of their daily lives. The rodeo (it does not happen anymore), is another performance and celebration of Western heritage as Arizona is the birthplace of the Rodeo,which stems from competition based on real life skills needed in cattle ranching. Therefore a rodeo is a large part of the community celebration of western heritage and tradition.